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THE 





CHO MLUB, 



And Other Literary Diversions. 



BY 



BAYARD TAYLOR. 




BOSTON: 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 
1876. 

t. 






Copyright, 1872 attd 1876. 
Y JAMES R. OSGOOD k CO. 



University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 



CONTENTS. 



»— 

Pack 
Introduction v 

Night the First 11 

Morris, Poe, Browning. 

Night the Second 34 

Mrs. Sigolrney, Keats, Swinburne, Emeeson, Stedman. 

Night the Third 52 

Barry Cornwall, Whittier, Rossetti, Aldkich. 

Night the Fourth 72 

Bryant, Holmes, Willis, Tennyson. 

Night the Fifth . . . . . . .93 

Tvckerman, Longfellow, Stoddard, Mrs. Stoddard. 

Night the Sixth 113 

Lowell, Bayard Taylor, Mrs. Browning, Bokkr. 

Night the Seventh 132 

Jean Tngelow, Buchanan Read, Julta Ward Howe, 
Piatt, William Winter, Mrs. Piatt. 



IV COXTEXTS. 



Night the Eighth 150 

"Walt Whitman, Beet Haste, John Hav, Joaquin 
Miller. 



The Battle of the Bards 168 

A Review 175 

Paradise Discovered 186 



INTRODUCTION". 




HE papers wliich make up tliis volume are 
sufficiently described by its title. They 
are literary "Diversions," — the product 
of a good many random hours of thought- 
less (or, at least, only half-thoughtful) recreation and 
amusement, — nothing else. More than as many 
burlesque imitations of authors, living or dead, as 
are here contained, had been written before any 
thought of publication was suggested. The fact that 
there was no such original design requires that the 
form ill which the diversions are now presented 
should be explained to the reader. 

The liabit originated, very much as it is described 
in the " First Evening," at least twenty years ago, 
in a small private circle. Three or four young- 
authors found not only amusement, but an agree- 
able relaxation from their graver tasks, in drawing 
names and also subjects as from a lottery- wheel, and 
improvising imitations of older and more renowned 
poets. Nothing was further from their minds than 
ridicule, or even incidental disparagement, of the 



VI IXTEODUCTION. 

latter, many of whom were not only recognized, but 
genuinely revered, by all. One form of intellectual 
diversion gradually led to another : the parodies 
alternated with the filling up of end-rhymes (usually 
of the most difficult and incongruous character), 
with the writing of double or concealed acrostics, 
spurious C[uotations from various languages, and 
whatever else could be devised by the ingenuity of 
the company. I may mention that some years before 
Mr. Lewis Carroll delighted all lovers of nonsense 
with his ballad of " The Jabberwock," we tried pre- 
cisely the same experiment of introducing invented 
w'ords. The following four lines may serve as a 
specimen of one attempt : — 

" Smitten by harsh, transcetic thuds of shame, 
My squelgcnce fades : I mogrify my bkme : 
The lui)kin workl, that leaves me yole and blant. 
Denies my affligance with looks askaut ! " 

Of course, nothing further than amusing nonsense 
was ever contemplated. A few of the imitations found 
their way into print, but tliey were comparatively mmo- 
ticed in the flood of burlesque with which the public 
Avas then supplied from many other quarters. As a 
participant, for several years, in a variety of fun which 
was certainly harmless so long as it remained private, 
I was of the opinion that very little could be made 
public without some accompanying explanation. The 
idea of setting the imitations in a framework of dia- 
logue which should represent various forms of literary 



INTRODUCTION. Vll 

taste and opinion seemed, first, to make the publica- 
tion possible. But when I came to examine the 
scattered leaves with a view to this end, I was at 
once struck with their inadequacy to the purpose of 
comical illustration. Removed from the genial atmos- 
phere in which they had spontaneously grown, many 
of them seemed withered and insipid. Many others 
were simply parodies of particular poems, instead of 
being burlesque reproductions of an author's manner 
and diction. The plan demanded that they should 
be rewritten, in consonance with the governing con- 
ception of the work, as a whole. This was accord- 
ingly done ; and not more tlian three or four of the 
following poems belong to the original private " diver- 
sions." 

There is scarcely a more hazardous experiment 
which an author can make, than to attempt to draw 
amusement from the intellectual characteristics of his 
contemporaries. If I had not been firmly convinced 
that the absence of any conscious unfriendliness on 
my part must make itself evident to many who were 
old and honored friends, I never should have dared 
it. In addition to this, I ventured on a number of 
private tests, and was further assured by finding that 
the subject of each travesty accepted his share with 
the greatest good-nature. I have yet to learn that 
the publication has given other than a very slight 
momentary annoyance, and that only in one or two 
cases. It is doubtful whether the same experiment 
could be made in any of the other arts, with a sim- 



Vlll INTRODUCTION. 

ilar result. I am satisfied that opera-singers, actors, 
composers, sculptors, painters, theologians even, have 
a better right to be called the genus irrUabile than 
the literary guild. The more devotedly an author 
aspires towards his ideal of achievement, the less 
he is concerned with all transitory estimates of his 
work. Looking back now, four years since the pa- 
pers appeared in the " Atlantic Monthly," I see more 
clearly how much was ventured, and I am profoundly 
grateful to find that no serious wound was given. 

Some of my friends have suggested that the char- 
acters introduced in the Echo Club, and the course of 
their dialogues, might have been made more interest- 
ing to the reader. This is probably true ; but, on 
the other hand, all work of the kind has but an 
ephemeral interest, and the leisure of mind whicli 
produced it seems now so remote, so beyond recall, 
that I have not undertaken to make any change. 
The four principal characters were designed to repre- 
sent classes, not individuals. In " The Ancient," I 
endeavored to express something of the calmer judi- 
cial temper, in literary matters, which comes from 
age and liberal study. The name of " ZoTlus " (tlie 
Ilomeromastix, or " Scourge of Homer") explains liis 
place : he is the carping, cynical, unconsciously arro- 
gant critic, — though these qualities could not be 
given with entire dramatic truth. " Galahad " is the 
young, sensational, impressive element in the reading 
pnblic ; admiration, in liim, is almost equivalent to 
adoration. " The Gannet " — a name suggested by a 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

poem written by a member of the class, long ago — 
represents brilliancy without literary principle, the 
love of technical effect, regardless of\he intellectual 
conception of a work. This is a class which is 

always large, and always more or less successful 

for a time. It was not necessary that each character 
should keep rigidly within the limits of his part, and 
thus each of them may be occasionally inconsistent. 
I need hardly explain that the author's own views, 
though scattered here and there through the dia- 
logues, together with their exact opposites, are not 
specially expressed by any one of the four persons. 

The papers were meant to be anonymous, but the 
secret was soon betrayed, — not, however, before 
some amusing illustrations of the personal character 
of much so-called criticism were furnished. The 
comments of certain writers for the press, before and 
after the authorship was known, formed a curious 
and instructive contrast. In London, the papers 
were collected and published as a volume, more than 
two years ago ; and there may be possibly enough 
diversion still lingering about them to satisfy the 
indolent mood of a summer afternoon. More than 
this is not intended by their appearance in the pres- 
ent form. 

^ I have added some other specimens of the same 
kind of fooling, partly in order to put everything of 
the sort in its place and leave it behind me, and 
partly because a good many personal friends have 
been amused, and hence some unknown friends may 



X INTRODUCTION. 

also be. This preliitle is no doubt longer than neces- 
sary ; but on completing and offering to others a 
diversion which will never be repeated, one may be 
pardoned for an over-scrupulousness in explaining 
circumstances and justifying motives. 

B. T. 
New York, June, 1876. 



^^9^ 



Diversions of the Echo Club. 



NIGHT THE FIRST. 




F it were not that tlie public clierislies rather 
singular and fluctuating notions with regard 
to the private and familiar intercourse of au- 
thors, the reports which follow would need no 
prologue. But between the two classes of readers, one 
of which innocently supposes T. Percy Jones to be the 
strange and terrible being whom they find represented in 
his "Firmilian," while the other, having discovered, by 
a few startling disillusions, that the race of authors is 
Janus-faced, is sure that T. Percy Jones is the exact 
opposite of his poetical self, there has arisen a confusion 
which it may be well to correct. 

The authors themselves, I am aware, are chiefly re- 
sponsible for these opposite impressions. When Joaquin 
Miller at Niagara, standing on the brink of the American 
precipice, kisses his hands grandly to Canada, exclaiming, 
" England, I thank you ! " or when Martin Parquhar 
Tupper, in a speech at New York, cries out with noble 



12 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

magnanimity, " America, be not afraid, / Tvill protect 
you ! " the public might reasonably expect to find all 
poets visibly trailing their mantles m our streets. But 
when an eager listener, stealing behind Irving and Hal- 
leck at an evening party, found them talking of — shoe- 
leather! and a breathless devotee of Thackeray, sitthig 
opposite to him at the dinner-table, saw those Delphian 
lips unclose only to utter the words, "Another potato, if 
you please ! " — they had revelations which might cast a 
dreadful suspicion over the nature of the whole tribe of 
autho]-s. 

1 would not have the reader imagine that the members 
of the Echo Club are represented by either of these ex- 
tremes. They are authors, of diilerent ages and very 
unequal places in public estimation. It would never 
occur to them to seat themselves on self-constructed 
pyramids, and speak as if The Ages were listening ; yet, 
like their brethren of all lands and all times, the staple 
of their talk is literature. "What EngUshmcn call "the 
shop," is an mevitable feature of their conversation. 
They can never come together without discussing the 
literary news of the day, the qualities of prominent 
authors, living or dead, and sometimes their own. How- 
ever the enlightened listener inight smile at the posit ivc- 
iicss of their opinions, and the contradictions into which 
they arc sometimes led in the lawless ])lay and keen clash 
of the ligiitcr intellect, he could not fail to recognize the 
sovereign importance they attach to their art. Without 
lifting from their intercourse tiiat last veil of mystery, 
behind which only equals are peiinitted to pass, 1 may 
safely try to report the mixture of sport and earnest, of 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 13 

satire and enthusiasm, of irreverent audacity and pure 
aspiration, wliicli met and mingled at their meetings. If 
tlie reader cannot immediately separate these elements, it 
is no fault of mine. He is most desirous, I know, to be 
present at the private diversions of a small society of au- 
thors, and to hear them talk as they are wont to talk 
when the wise heads of the world are out of ear-shot. 

The character which the society assumed for a short 
time was entirely accidental. As one of the Chorus, I 
was present at the first meeting, and of course I never 
failed afterwards. The four authors who furnished our 
entertainment were not aware that I had written down, 
from memory, the substance of the conversations, until 
our evenings came to an end ; and I have had some diffi- 
culty in obtaining their permission to publish my reports. 
The Ancient and Galahad feared that certain poets whom 
they delight to honor might be annoyed, not so much at the 
sportive imitation of their manner, as at the possible mis- 
conception of its purpose by the public. But Zoilus and 
the Gannet agreed with me, that where no harm is meant 
none can be inflicted; that the literature of our day is in 
a sad state of bewilderment and confusion, and that a 
few effervescing powders would perhaps soothe a public 
stomach which has been overdosed with startling ef- 
fects. 

At last the Ancient said : " So be it, then ! Take the 
poems, but don't bring your manuscript to us for correc- 
tion ! I am quite sure you have often reported us 
falsely, and if our masks of names are pulled off, we 
will have that defence." 

I have only to add that the three or four gentlemen 



14 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

comprismg the Clioms are not authors by profession. 
The Ancieut is in the habit of dividing the race of artists 
into active and passive,, — the latter possessing the artis- 
tic temperament, tlie tastes, the delights, the instincts of 
the race, — everything, except that creative gadfly which 
stings to expression. Jn every quality except production 
they are the equals of the producers, he says ; and they 
are quite as necessary to the world as the active artists, 
since they are the first to recognize the good points of 
the latter, to strengthen them with warm and intelligent 
sympathy, and to connnend them to the slower percep- 
tions and more vmcertain tastes of the mass of readers, 
lam sure, at least, that our presence and. participation 
in the amusements was a gentle stimulus to the principal 
actors. "We were their enthusiastic audience, and kept 
them fresh and warm to their work. I do not record 
our share in the conversation, for there is sufficient di- 
versity of opinion without it ; and I made no notes of it 
at the time. — The Nameless Repokter. 

In the rear of Karl Schafer's lager-beer cellar and res- 
taurant — which every one knows is but a block from the 
central part of Broadway — there is a small room, with 
a vaulted ceiling, MJiich Karl calls his Lbicoir/rube, or 
Lions' Den. Here, in 1 heir Bohemian days, Zoilus and the 
Gannet had been accustomed to meet to discuss literary 
projects, and read fragments of manuscript to each other. 
The Cliorus, the Ancient, and young Galahad gradually 
fell into the same habit, and thus a little circle of six, 
seven, or eight members came to be formed. Tlie room 
could comfortably contain no more : it was quiet, with a 



DIVEUSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 15 

dim, smoky, confidential atmosphere, and suggested Auer- 
bach's Cellar to the Ancient, who had been in Leipzig. 

Here, authors, books, magazines, and newspapers 
were talked about ; sometimes a manuscript poem was 
read by its writer ; while mild potations of beer and the 
dreamy breath of cigars delayed the nervous, fidgety, 
clattering-footed American Hours, One night they 
chanced upon a discussion of Morris's "Earthly Para- 
dise," which Galahad rapturously admired, while the An- 
cient continued to draw him out, at first by guarded praise, 
then by critical objections to the passages which Gala- 
had quoted. The conversation finally took this turn : — 

Galahad. Indeed, you are not just ! Tell me, have 
you read the whole work ? 

The Ancient. Yes: I had it with me on my last 
trip to Havana, and read all three volumes under the 
most favorable auspices, — lying on deck in the shadow 
of a sail, with the palms and mangroves of the Bahamas 
floating past, in the distance. Just so I floated through 
the narrative poems, one after the other, admiring the 
story-teller's art, heartily enjoying many passages, accept- 
ing even the unnecessary quaintness of the speech, and 
at first disposed to say, " Here is a genuine poet ! " 
But I was conscious of a lack of something, which, in my 
lazy mood, I did not attempt to analyze. When the 
lines and scenes and characters began to fade in my 
mind (which they did almost immediately), I found that 
the final impression which tiie work left behind was very 
much like the Hades of the Greeks, — a gray, misty, 
cheerless land, full of wandering shadows, — a place, 
where there is no sun, no clear, conscious, joyous life. 



16 DIVERSIONS OP THE ECHO CLUB. 

wliere even fortunate love is sad, where hope is unknowii 
to the heart, and there is nothing in the distance but death, 
and nothing after death. There Imd been a languid and 
rather agreeable sense of enjoyment ; but it was followed 
by a chill. 

Galahad. Oh ! 

The Gannet. How often have I told you, Galahad, 
that you 're too easily taken off your feet ! He 's very 
clever, I admit ; but there 's a deal of trick in it, for all 
that. His revival of obsolete words, his imitation of 
Chaucer — 

Galahad {impatiently). Imitation! 

The Gannet. Well, — only half, and half similarity 
of talent. But no writer can naturally assume a manner 
of speech which has long fallen into disuse, even iu 
literature : so far as he does so, he is artificial. And this 
artifice Morris carries into his i)ictures of sentiment and 
passion. You cease to feel with and for his characters, 
long before he has done with them. 

Galahad. As human beings, perhaps; but as con- 
ceptions of beauty, they have another existence. 

The Ganxet. When I want a Greek frieze, let me 
have it in marble ! Yes, he 's a skilful workman, and 
a successful one, as his popularity proves. And he 's 
lucky in producing his camied fruit after Swinburne's 
curry and pepper-sauce : biit it is canned. I don't say 
I could equal him in his own line, for that requires 
natural inclination as well as knack, yet I think I could 
give you something exactly in his style, in ten minutes. 

The AxNXiENT. Ciiallengc him, Galahad! 

The Gannet. Get mc paper and pencil! I will at 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 17 

least try. Now, Galahad, put up your watch; I only 
stipulate that you don't time me too exactly. Stay ! — • 
take another sheet and try the same thing yourself. 
{They write ; meanwhile the others talk.) 
The Gannet {after twenty minutes). I have failed in 
time, because I began wrong. I tried to write a serious 
passage in Morris's manner, and my own habit of expres- 
sion immediately came in as a disturbing influence. Then 
I gave up the plan of producing something really earnest 
and coherent, — that is, I kept in mind the manner, 
alone, and let the matter come of itself. Yery little ef- 
foi't was required, I found : the lines arranged themselves 
easily enougli. Now, lend me your ears : it is a passage 
from " The Taming of Themistocles," in the ninth vol- 
ume of the " Earthly Paradise" : {Reads.) 

" He must be holpen ; yet how help shall I, 
Steeped to the lips in ancient misery. 
And by the newer grief apparelled ? 
If that I throw these ashes on mine head. 
Do this thing for thee, — while about my way 
A shadow gathers, and the piteous day. 
So wan and bleak for very loneliness, 
Turneth from sight of such unruthfulness ? " 
Therewith he caught an arrow from the sheaf. 
And brake the shaft in witlessness of grief ; 
But Chiton's vest, such dismal fear she had. 
Shook from the heart that sorely was a-drad. 
And she began, withouten any pause, 
To say : " Why break the old iEtolian laws, 
Send this man forth, that never harm hath done. 
Between the risen and the setten sun ? " 



18 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

And next, they wandered to a steepy till, 
Whence all the land was lying gray and still, 
And not a living creature there might he, 
From the cold mountains to the salt, cold sea ; 
Only, within a little cove, one sail 
Shook, as it whimpered at the cruel gale, 
And the mast moaned from chafing of the rope ; 
So all was pain : they saw not any hope. 

ZoiLTJS. But that is no imitation ! You have copied 
a passage out of — out of — pshaw ! I know the poem, 
and I remember the lines. 

The Ganxet {imUgnantJij). Out of Milton, why not 
say ? — M'here you '11 be just as likely to find them. Now, 
let me hear yours, Galahad ; you were writing. 

Galahad {crushing the paper hi his hand). Mine is 
neither one thing nor the other, — not the author's po- 
etic dialect throughout, nor hinting of his choice of sub- 
jects. I began something, which was really my ow^n, 
and then gradually ran into an echo. I think you have 
hit upon the true method ; and we must try again, since 
we know it. 

The Gannet. Why not try others, — a dozen of 
them ? By Jove, 1 should like some mere gynuiastics, 
after the heavy prose I 've been writing ! And you, too, 
Gala]uul,and the Ancient (if liis ponderous dignity does n't 
prevent it) ; and here 's Zoilus, the very fellow for such 
a diversion ! We can come together, here, and be a pri- 
vate, secret club of Parodists, — of Echoes, — of Icono- 
clasts, — of — 

The Ancient. Of irreverent satirists, I fear. That 
would be a new kind of a llaiiibund, indeed ; but, after 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 19 

all, it need not be ill-natured. At least, to insure j^our- 
selves against relapsing into mere burlesque and inciden- 
tal depreciation, — wliicli is a tempting, but nearly always 
a fatal course, for young writers, — I must be present. 
My indiiferentism, as you call it, which sometimes pro- 
vokes you when I cannot share all your raptures, may do 
good service in keeping you from rushing into the oppo- 
site extreme. As for taking part in the work, I won't 
promise to do much. You know I am a man of uncer- 
tain impulses, and can get nothing out of myself by force 
of resolution. 

Omnes. 0, you must take part ! It will be capital 
sport. 

The Ancient {deliberate!?/, between the whiffs of his 
cigar). First of all, let us clearly understand what is to 
be done. To undertake parodies, as the word is gener- 
ally comprehended, — that is, to make a close imitation 
of some particular poem, though it should be character- 
istic of the author, — would be rather a flat business. 
Even the Brothers Smith and Bon Gaultier, admirable as 
they are, stuck too closely to selected models ; and Phebe 
Gary, who has written the best American parodies, did 
the same thing. I think the Ganuet has discovered some- 
thing altogether more original and satisfactory, — a sim- 
ple echo of the author's tone and manner. The choice 
of a subject gives another chance of fun. 

{He takes up the Gannet's imitation and looks over it.) 

Here the dialect and movement and atmosphere are 
suggested; the exaggeration is neither coarse nor ex- 
treme, and the comical effect seems to lie mainly in the 
circumstance that it is a wilful imitation. If we were to 



20 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

find tlie passage in one of Morris's poems, we might think 
it carelessly written, somewhat obseure, but still in tlie 
same key with wliat precedes and follows it. Possibly, 
nay, almost certain!}^, it would not amuse us at all ; but 
just now I noticed that even Galahad could not help 
laughing. A diversion of this sort is less a labor and 
more a higher and finer recreation of the mind, than the 
mechanical setting of some given poem, line by line, to a 
ludicrous subject, like those endless and generally stupid 
parodies of Longfellow's "Excelsior" and Emerson's 
"Brahma." For heaven's — no. Homer's — sake, let us 
not fall into that vein ! 

The Gannet. Thou speakest w^ell. 

Galahad. But how shall we select the authors ? And 
shall I be required to make my own demigods ridiculous ? 

ZoiLUs. Let me prove to you, by one of your own 
demigods, that nothing can be cither sublime or ridicu- 
lous. Poetry is the Brahma of literature, — above all, 
pervading all, self-existent, though so few find her (and 
men of business reckon ill who leave her out), and tliere- 
fore quite unmoved by anything we may do. Don't you 
remember the lines ? — 

" Far or forgot to me is near, 

Shadow and sunlight are the same ; 
The vanished gods to me appear, 

And one to me are shame and fame." 

The Ancient. You are right, Zoilus, in spite of your 
sarcasm. Besides, it is an evidence of a poet's distinct 
individuality, when he can be annisingly imitated. "\Vo 
can only make those the objects of our fun whose manner 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 21 

or dialect stamps itself so deeply into our minds that a 
new cast can be taken. We are sporting around great, 
and sometimes little names, like birds or cats or lizards 
around the feet, and over the shoulders, and on the heads 
of statues. Nom^ there 's an idea for a poem, Galahad. 
But, seriously, how would you imitate Pollok's " Course 
of Time," or Young's "Night Thoughts," or Blair's 
" Grave," or any other of those masses of words, which 
are too ponderous for poetry and too respectable for ab- 
surdity ! Either extreme will do for us, excellence or imbe- 
cility; but it must liave a distinct, pronounced character. 

The Gannet. Come, now ! I 'm eager for another 
trial. 

The Ancient. Let us each write the names of three 
or four poets on separate slips of paper, and throw them 
into my hat ; then let each draw out one slip as his model 
for to-night. Thus there will be no clashing of tastes or 
inclinations, and our powers of imitation will be more 
fairly tested. 

{They write three names apiece, the Chorus taUng 'part. 
Then all are thrown iftto the The Ancient's hat and 
shaken up together.) 

Galahad {drawing). Robert Browning. 

The Gannet. So is mine. 

ZoiiLus. Edgar A. Poe. 

The Ancient. Some of us have written the . same 
names. Well, let it be so' to-night. If we find the ex- 
periment diverting, we can easily avoid any such repeti- 
tion next time. Moreover, Browning alone will challenge 
echoes from all of us; and I am curious to see whether 
the several imitations will reflect the same characteristics 



22 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

of liis style. It vri\], at least, show wlietlier the stamp 
upon each mind has any common likeness to the original. 

The Gaxnet. A good idea ! But Zoilus is already 
possessed by the spirit of Poe ; not, I hope, in the manner 
of Dr. Garth Wilkinson of London, whose volume of 
poems dictated by the spirits of the dead authors is the 
most astonishing collection I ever saw. He makes Poe's 
"wet locks" rhyme to his "fetlocks" ! It is even worse 
than Harris's "Epic of the Starry Heavens," dictated to 
him in forty-eight hours by Dante. By the by, we have 
a good chance to test this matter of possession; the 
suggestion nimbly and sweetly recommends itself to my 
fancy. But since I was your pioneer to-night, I '11 even 
rest until Zoilus has finished ; then, let us all start fairly. 

Zoilus [afeic minutes later). If this is at all good, it 
is not because of labor. I had an easier task than the 
Gannet. {Reads?) 

THE PROMISSORY NOTE. 

In the lonesome latter years, 

(Fatal years !) 
To the dropping of my tears 
Danced the mad and mystic spheres 
In a rounded, reeling rune, 
'Neath the moon. 
To the dripping and the dropping of my tears. 

Ah, my soul is swathed in gloom, 

(T'lalunie !) 
In a dim Titanic tomb, 
For my gaunt and gloomy soul 



DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 23 

Ponders o'er tlie penal scroll. 
O'er the parchment (not a rhyme). 
Out of place, — out of time, — 
I am shredded, shorn, unshifty, 

(O, the fifty !) 
And the days have passed, the three. 

Over me ! 
And the debit and the credit are as one to him and me ! 

'T was the random runes I via-ote 
At the bottom of the note, 

(Wrote and freely 

Gave to Greeley,) 
In the middle of the night. 
In the mellow, moonless night, 
"When the stars were out of sight. 
When my pulses, like a knell, 

(Israfel !) 
Danced with dim and dying fays 
O'er the ruins of my days. 
O'er the dimeless, timeless days. 
When the lift}'", drawn at thirty. 
Seeming thrifty, yet the dirty 
Lucre of the market, was the most that I could raise ! 

Fiends controlled it, 
(Let him hold it !) 
Devils held for me the inkstand and the pen ; 
Now the days of grace arc o'er, 

(Ah, Lenore !) 
I am but as other men : 
What is time, time, time. 
To my rare and runic rhyme. 



24 DIVERSIONS or THE ECHO CLUB. 

To my random, reeling rtyme, 
By tha sands along the shore, 
"Where the tempest whispers, " Pay him ! " and I answer, "Never- 
more ! " 

Galahad. What do you mean by the reference to 
Greeley ? 

ZoiLUS. I Ihouglit everybody had heard that Greeley's 
only autograph of Poe was a signature to a promissory 
note for fifty dollars. He offers to sell it for half the 
money. Now, I don't mean to be Avicked, and to do 
nothing with the dead except bone 'em, but when such a 
cue pops into one's mind, what is one to do ? 

Tee Ancient. 0, 1 think you 're still Avithin decent 
limits ! There was a congenital twist about poor Poe. 
"VYe can't entirely condone his faults, yet we stretch our 
charity so as to cover as much as possible. His poetry 
has a hectic flush, a strauge, fascinating, narcotic quality, 
which belongs to him alone. Baudelaire and Swinburne 
after him have been trying to surpass him by increasing 
the dose ; but his Muse is the natural Pythia, inheriting 
her convulsions, while they eat all sorts of insane roots 
to produce theirs. 

Galahad {eagerlt/). Did you ever know him ? 

The Ancient. I met him two or three times, heard 
him lecture once (his enunciation was exquisite), and saw 
him now and then in Broadway, — enough to satisfy me 
that there were two men in him : one, a refined gentle- 
man, an aspiring soul, an artist among those who had 
little sense of literary art ; the other — 

ZoiLUS. Go on ! 

TuE Ancient. " Built, his nest with the birds of 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 25 

Night." No more of that ! Now let us all invoke the 
demigod, Browning. 

Galahad. It will be a task. 

ZoiLus. I don't think so; it's even simpler than 
what we 've done. Why, Browning's manner is as dis- 
tinctly his own as Carlyle's, and sometimes as wilfully 
artificial. In fact, he is so peculiarly himself that no 
younger poet has dared to imitate his fashion of speech, 
although many a one tries to follow him in the choice and 
treatment of subjects. Browning is the most dramatic 
of poets since Shakespeare ; don't you think so. Ancient ? 

The Ancient. In manner and language, perhaps. 
I should prefer to call him a psycliologist. His subtile 
studies of all varieties of character are wonderful, if you 
look at the substance only ; but every one of them, from 
first to last, speaks with the voice of Browning. Take 
" The Ring and the Book," for instance, — and I con- 
sider it one of the most original and excellent poems in 
the English language, — and in each of the twelve divis- 
ions you will find exactly the same interruptions, paren- 
theses, ellipses, the same coinage of illustration and play 
of recondite hints under what is expressed. I should 
guess that he writes very rapidly, and concerns himself 
little with any objective theories of art. You ought to 
copy his manner easily enough. 

ZoiLUS. I can. I have caught the idea already. {He 
takes a pencil and writes rapidly. Galahad and the 
Gannet also begin to write, hut slowly.) 

The Chorus {to The Ancient). Wliy don't you 
begin ? 

The Ancient. I was deliberating ; what a range of 
2 



26 DIYERSIOXS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

forms there is ! He is as inexhaustible as Raphael, and 
he always expresses the same sense of satisfaction in his 
work. Well, anything will do for a subject. {Writes.) 

TjdiiAj^ {after a few minutes) . Hearken! I must read 
at once, or I shall go on wanting forever ; it bewilders 
me. {Reads.) 

"Who toil Is, may hear Sordello's story told 

By Robert Browning : warm ? (you ask) or cold ? 

But just so much as seemeth to enhance — 

The start being granted, onward goes the dance 

To its own music — the poem's inward sense ; 

So, by its verity .... nay, no pretence 

Avails your self-created bards, and thus 

By just the chance of half a hair to us. 

If understood .... but what the odds to you, 

"Who, with no obhgations to pursue 

Scant tracks of thought, if such, indeed, there be 

In this one poem, — stay, my friend, and see 

"Whether you note that creamy tint of flesh, 

Softer than bivalve pink, impearled and fresh. 

Just where the small o' the back goes curving down 

To orbic muscles .... ha ! that sidelong frown 

Pursing the eye, and folded, deeply cleft 

r the nostril's edge, as though contempt were left 

Just o'er the Une that bounds indifference 

But here 's the test of any closer sense 

(You follow me ?) such as I started with ; 

And there be minds that seek the very pith, 

Crowd dose, bore deep, push far, and reach the light 

Through league-long tunnels — 

Galahad {interrupting). But that is Sordello you're 
reading ! 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 27 

ZoiLUS, Yes, mine. I am one of the few who have 
bored their way through that amazing work. Browning's 
" Sordello " (if you ever read it, you will remember) 
begins with something about " Pentapolin o' the Naked 
Arm." It is not any particular passage, but the manner 
of the whole poem which I 've tried to reproduce ; a little 
exaggerated, to be sure, but not much. Now, I call this 
perplexity, not profundity. Was n't it the Swedish poet, 
Tegner, who said, "The obscurely uttered is the ob- 
scurely thought " ? 

The Ancient. Yes ; and it is true in regard to poetry, 
however the case may be with metaphysics. But we have 
a right to be vexed with Browning, when, in the dedica- 
tory letter to the new edition of " Sordello," he says that 
he had taken pains to make the work something " which 
the mauy might, instead of what the few must, like," but, 
after all, did not choose to publish the revised copy. 
There is a touch of arrogance in this expression which I 
should rather not have encountered. The " inust " which 
he flings at the few is far more offensive than utter indif- 
ference to all readers would have been ; and not even 
those few can make us accept " Sordello." However, 
midtum creavit is as good a plea as multum dilexit. 
Browning has a royal brain, and we owe bim too much 
to bear malice against him. Only, we must not encour- 
age our masters in absolute rule, or they will become 
tyrants. 

ZoiLUS. I don't acknowledge any masters ! 

The Ancient. We all know that. Now, Galahad, 
what have you done ? 

Galahad (^reads) : — 



28 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

BY THE SEA. 

{Jilutatis mutandis.) 

I. 

Is it life or is it death ? 

A ^Ylliff of the cool salt scum, 
As the whole sea putfed its breath 

Against you, — blind and dumb. 
This way it answereth. 



Nearer the sands it shows 
Spotted and leprous tints : 

But stay ! yon fisher knows 
Rock-tokens, which evince 

How high the tide arose. 



How high ? In you and me 
'T was falling then, I think 

Open your heart's eyes, see 
From just so slight a chink 

The chasm that now must be. 



You sighed and shivered then, 

Blue ecstasies of June 
Around you, shouts of lishciTnen, 

Sharp wings of sea-gulls, soon 
To dip — the clock struck ten ! 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 29 

V. 

Was it the cup too full, 

To carry it you grew 
Too faint, the wine's hue dull, 

(Duluess, misjudged untrue !) 
Love's flower unfit to cull ? 

VI. 

You should have held me fast 

One moment, stopped my pace. 
Crushed down the feeble, vast 

Suggestions of embrace. 
And so be crowned at last. 



But now ! . . . . Bare-legged and brown 

Bait-diggers delve the sand, 
Tramp i' the sunshine down 

Burnt-ochre vestured laud. 
And yonder stares the town. 

VIII. 

A heron screams ! 1 shut 

This book of scurf and scum, 
Its final page uncut ; 

The sea-beast, blind and dumb, 
Done with his bellowing ? All but ! 

The Gannet. It seems we have all hit upon the ob- 
vious characteristics, especially those which are most 
confusing. There is something very like that in the 
" Dramatis Persona," or there seems to be. Now, I 
wonder how my attempt will strike you? {Reads.) 



30 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 



ANGELO ORDERS HIS DINNER. 

I, Angelo, obesei, black-garmented. 

Respectable, much iu demand, well fed 

With mine own larder's dainties, — where, indeed, 

Such cakes of myrrh or fine alyssum seed, 

Thin as a maDow-leaf, embrowned o' the top, 

"Which, cracking, lets the ropy, trickling drop 

Of sweetness touch your tongue, or potted nests 

AVhich my recondite recipe invests 

"With cold conglomerate tidbits — ah, the bill ! 

(You say,) but given it were mine to fill 

My chests, the case so put were yours, we 'U say, 

(This counter, here, your post, as mine to-day,) 

And you 've an eye to luxm-ies, what harm 

In smoothing down your palate with the charm 

Yourself concocted ? There we issue take ; 

And see ! as thus across the rim I break 

This puffj' paunch of glazed embroidered cake, 

So breaks, through use, the lust of watering chaps 

And craveth plainness : do I so ? Perhaps ; 

But that 's my secret. Find me such a man 

As Lippo yonder, built upon the plan 

Of heavy storage, double-navelled, fat 

From his own giblets' oils, an Ararat 

Vplift o'er water, sucking rosy di-aughts 

Prom Noah's vineyard, — ... crisp, enticing wafts 

Y'on kitchen now emits, which to your sense 

Somewhat abate the fe;ir of old events, 

Qualms to the stomach, — I, you see, am slow 

Vnncccssary duties to forego, — 

Y'ou understand ? A venison hauuch, haut gout. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 31 

Ducks that in Cimbrian olives mildly stew. 
And sprigs of anise, might one's teeth provoke 
To taste, and so we wear the complex yoke 
Just as it suits, — my liking, I confess, 
More to receive, and to partake no less. 
Still more obese, while through thick adipose 
Sensation shoots, from testing tongue to toes 
Far off, dim-conscious, at the body's verge, 
"Where the froth -whispers of its waves emerge 
On the untasting sand. Stay, now ! a seat 
Is bare : I, Angelo, will sit and eat. 

The Chorus. There 's no mistaking any of them ! 

The Ancient. And yet what a wealth of forms and 
moods there is left ! You have only touched the poet 
on two or three of his shifting sides. Whoever should 
liear these imitations first, and then take up the original 
works, would recognize certain fashions here and there, 
but lie would be wholly unprepared for the special best 
qualities of Browning. 

The Chorus. How, then, have you fared ? 

The Ancient. I 'm afraid I 've violated the very 
law I laid down at the beginning. But I took the first 
notion that came into my head, and I could not possibly 
make it either all imitatiou or all burlesque. However, 
hear, and then punish me as you like ! {Reads.) 

ON THE TRACK. 

Where the crags are close, and the railway-curve 

Begins to swerve 
From its straight-shot course i' the level plain 

To the hills again, 



32 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

At tlie end of the twilight, when you mark 
The denser dark 

Blown by the wind from the heights, that make 

A cold, coiled snake 
Round the shuddering world, as a Midgards-orm- 

like, sinuous form, — 
With scant-cut hosen, jacket in hands. 

The small boy stands. 

Clipt by the iron ways, shiny and straight. 

You see him wait, 
'Twixt the coming thunder and the rock, 

To fend the shock. 
As a mite should stay, with its wriggling force, 

A planet's course. 

Even as he dances, leaps, and stoops. 

The black train swoops 
Up from the level : wave jacket, cry ! 

Must all then die ? 
Sweating, the small boy smiles again ; 

He has stopped the train ! 

Galahad, Well, that somehow suggests to me two 
poems: his " Love amougthe Ruius," and the "Incident 
of the Ereuch Camp," yet it is not an imitation of either. 
I should only apply to it the same criticism as to my 
own, — that it gives no hint of Browning's subtile and 
ingenious way of dealing with the simplest subjects. He 
seems always to seek some other than the ordinary and 
natural point of view. I believe he could change 
"Motiier Hubbard" and "Kits, cats, sacks, and wives" 
into profound psychological poems. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 



33 



The Ancient. Now, why did n't you say that before 
we began ? I miglit have made, at least, a more gro- 
tesque failure. But, O Gambriuus! our glasses have 
been empty this hour. Ring for the waiter, Galahad ; let 
us refresh our wearied virtue, and depart ! 

OiMNES {touching glasses). To be continued ! 




2* 



NIGHT THE SECOND. 




^g^^'HE friends came together again in tlie Lions* 
%MJ Den, a little earlier than tlieir wont ; but they 
did not immediately take up the chief diversion 
of the evening. In intellectual, as in physical 
acrobatics, the joints must be gradually made flexible, 
and the muscles warm and elastic, by lighter feats ; so 
the conversation began as mere skylarking and mutual 
chaffing, as empty and evanescent, when you attempt to 
catch it, as the foam-ripples on a swift stream. But 
Galahad had something on his mind ; he had again read 
portions of the "Earthly Paradise," and insisted that the 
atmosphere of the poems was not gray and overcast, but 
charged with a golden, luminous mist, like that of the 
Indian summer. Pinally, he asked the Ancient, — 

" Granting the force of your impression, might not 
much of it come from some want of harmony between 
your mood or temper of mind and the author's ? In that 
case, it would not be abstractly just." 

The Ancient. I don't think that we often can be 
"abstractly just" towards contemporary poets; we 
either exalt or abase them too much. For we and they 
breathe either the same or opposite currents in the intel- 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 35 

lectual atmosphere of the time, and there can be no im- 
partial estimate until those winds have blown over. This 
is precisely the reason why you sometimes think me in- 
different, when I am only trying to shove myself as far off 
as the next generation ; at least, to get a little outside 
of the fashions and whims and prejudices of this day. 
American authors, and also their publishers, are often 
cliarged with an over-concern for the opinion of the Eng- 
lish literary journals. I think their interest quite nat- 
ural — 

ZoiLUS {jinth energy). Now, you surely are not going 
to justify that sycophantic respect for the judgment of 
men who know so much less than we do of our own lit- 
erature ! 

The Ancient. I condemn all sycophancy, even to 
the great, triumphant, overwhelming American spirit ! 
But, until we have literary criticism of a more purely ob- 
jective character in this country, — until our critics learn 
to separate their personal tastes and theories from their 
estimate of the executive and artistic quality of the au- 
thor ; or, which amounts to the same thing, to set this 
quality, this creative principle, higher than the range of 
themes and opinions, — the author will look to the judg- 
ment of critics, whose distance and whose very want of 
acquaintance with our prejudices and passions assure him 
of a certain amount of impartiality. The feeling is recip- 
rocal ; I venture to say that an intelligent American criti- 
cism has more weight with an English author than that 
of one of his own Reviews. 

ZoiLUS. Bo you mean to say that we have no genuine 
criticism ? 



36 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

The Ancient. Bj no means ; ttc have some that is 
admiiable. But it is only recognized at its true value by 
a very small class ; the great reading public is blissfully 
ignorant of its existence. It adds to the confusion, that 
many of our writers have no definite ideas of literary ex- 
cellence apart from the effect which immediately follows 
their work ; and readers are thus actually misled by those 
who should guide them. Why, a year ago, the most 
popular book iu the whole country was one which docs 
not even belong to literature; and Ihe most popular 
poem of late years was wTitten, not from a poetic, but 
from a high moral, inspiration ! Somebody must set up 
a true aesthetic standard ; it is high time this were done, 
and a better criticism must be the first step. 

The Gannet. Why don't you undertake it yourself ? 

The Ancient. I 'm too fond of comfort. Think 
what a hornet's-nest I should thrust my hand into ? 
Moreover, I doubt whether one could force such interests 
beyond their natural growth ; we are still suffering from 
the intellectual demoralization which the war left behind 
it. But, where 's the hat ? We are spoiling ourselves 
by all this serious prose. Let us throw in a few more 
names, and try our luck again. 

{Tlieij draw the lots as before.) 

The Gannet. John Keats ! How shall I wear his 
mantle ? 

ZoiLUS. I 'm crushed, buried under an avalanche of, 
— well, not much, after all. Don't ask me who it is, 
\intil I try my hiuid. You would confuse me M'ith your 
laughter. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 37 

The Ancient. I shall keep ^ mine specially for you, 
Zoilus. 

Galahad. I have drawn one of the names I wrote 
myself ; but you have already so demorahzed me, that I 
will try to parody him as heartily as if I did n't like his 
poetry. 

The Ancient. You are getting on. But I think the 
Gannet ought to draw another name ; it is best not to go 
back of our own day and generation. I propose that we 
limit ourselves to the poets who stand nearer to our own 
minds, under whom, or beside whom, or above whom (as 
each chooses to estimate himself), we have grown and are 
now growing. The further we withdraw from this at- 
mosphere, the more artificial must our imitations be. 

The Gannet. Let it pass this once, I pray thee, for 
I have caught my idea ! But, even taking your limita- 
tion, who is nearer us than Keats ? Not alone in his 
own person, though there he stands among ns ; he is in 
Tennyson, in Morris, in Swinburne, and, more remotely, 
in the earlier poems of Browning and Lowell, besides a 
host of small rhymers. He still approaches us, while 
Shelley and Byron withdraw. I think it 's a fair excep- 
tion ; and if yon won't admit it, 1 '11 take the sense of 
the company. 

Omnes. Go on ! 

{All write limly for fifteen mimites, except The Ancient 
who talks in a lower tone to The Chorus.) 

The Gannet {looking ti-p). Zoilus, you were ready 
first. 

Zoilus. Could you guess whom I represent ? 
The Gannet. Tupper? 



38 DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

ZoiLXJS. He ? he is liis own best parody. No ; it is 
a lyrical inanity, "which once was tolerably famous. The 
Ancient's rule as to what is properly parodiable does n't 
apply here ; for it is neither excellent nor imbecile. I 
think I had the right to reject the name, but I have tried 
to see whether a respectable jingle of words, expressing 
ordinary and highly proper feelings, can be so imitated as 
to be recognized. Here it is. {Reads.) 

OBITUARY. 

On the Death of the Rev. Elijah W. Batey. 

Ay, bear him to his sainted rest. 

Ye mourners, but be calm ! 
Instead of dirge and sable crest. 

Raise ye thanksgiving psalm ! 
For he was old and full of years. 

The grandsire of your souls : 
Then check ye now your heaving tears. 

And quench the sigh that roUs ! 

Ye heard him from yon pulpit preach. 

For sixty years and more, 
Still battering with nnwearied speech 

The ceiling, pews, and floor ; 
As, hour by hour, his periods fell, 

Yonr pious hopes arose, 
And each one murmured, " All is well," 

Long ere the sermon's close. 

Think ye the voice that spake so long 
Can anywhere be dumb ? 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 39 

Before him went a goodly throng, 

And wait for him to come. 
He preaches still, in other spheres, 

To saved and patient souls ; 
Then, mourners, check your heaving tears. 

And quench the sigh that rolls ! 

Omnes {shouting). Mrs. Sigourney ! 

ZoiLUS. I have succeeded, then ! But, O my friends, 
is the success a thing over which I should rejoice ? Do 
not, I beg of you, do not congratulate me ! 

Galahad. Come, now, don't abuse good old Mother 
SIgourney! For a long time she was almost our only 
woman-poet ; and I insist that she was not a mere echo 
of Felicia Hemans. 

ZoiLUS {ironically). Of course not! None but her- 
self could ever have written that exquisite original poem, 
"On Finding a Shred of Linen." One passage I can 
never forget : — 

" Methinlcs I scan 
Some idiosyncrasy, which marks thee out 
A defunct pillow-case." 

Galahad. You are incorrigible ; but we wait for the 
Gannet and the idea he has caught. 

The Gannet. It was better in anticipation than it 
seems after execution. However, Keats is too dainty a 
spirit to be possessed in a few minutes. {Reads) 



40 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

ODE ON A JAR OF PICKLES. 

m I. 

A sweet, acidulous, down -reaching ttrill 

Pervades my sense : I seem to see or hear 
The lushy garden-grounds of Greenwich Hill 

In autumn, when the crispy leaves are sere : 
And odors haunt me of remotest spice 

From the Levant or musky-aired Calhay, 
Or from the saffron-fields of Jericho, 
Where everything is nice : 

The more I sniff, the more I swoon away. 
And what else mortal palate craves, forego. 

II. 
Odors unsmelled are keen, but those I smell 
Are keener ; wherefore let me sniff again ! 
Enticing walnuts, I have kno^^^^ ye well 

In youth, when pickles were a passing pain ; 
Unwitting youth, that craves the candy stem. 

And sugar-plums to olives doth prefer. 
And even licks the pots of marmalade 
"When sweetness clings to them : 
But noAv I dream of ambergris and myrrh. 
Tasting these walnuts in the poplar shade. 

ITI. 

Lo ! hoarded coolness in the heart of noon. 
Plucked with its dew, the cucumber is here. 

As to the Dryad's parching lips a boon. 

And crescent bean-pods, unto Bacchus dear ; 

And, last of all, the pepper's pungent globe. 
The scarlet dwelling of the sylph of lire. 



DIVEUSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 41 

Provoking purple draughts.; and, surfeited, 
I cast my trailing robe 
O'er my pale feet, toueli up my tuneless lyre. 
And twist the Delphic wreath to suit my head. 

IV. 

Here shall my tongue in other wise be soured 

Than fretful men's in parched and palsied days ; 
And, by the mid-May's dusky leaves embowered 

Forget the fruitful blame, the scanty praise. 
No sweets to them who sweet themselves were born, 

Whose natures ooze with lucent saccharine ; 
Who, with sad repetition soothly cloyed. 
The lemon-tinted morn 

Enjoy, and for acetic darkness pine : 
Wake I, or sleep ? The pickle-jar is void. 

ZoiLUS. Not to be mistaken; but you have almost 
stepped over the bounds of our plan. Those two odes 
of Keats are too immediately suggested, though I find 
that only two lines are actually parodied. I agree with 
the Ancient ; let us stick to the authors of our own day ! 
Galahad, you look mysterious; are we to guess your 
singer from the echo ? 

Galahad. Are you all ready to hear me chant, in 
rare and rhythmic redundancy, the viciousness of virtue ? 

The Chorus. 0, Swinburne ! chant away ! 

Galahad {reads) : — 

THE LAY OF MACARONI. 

As a wave that steals when the winds are stormy 
From creek to cove of the curving shore. 



42 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Buffeted, blown, and broken before me, 

Scattered and spread to its sunlit core ; 
As a dove that dips in the dark of maples 

To sip the sweetness of shelter and shade, 
I kneel in thy nimbus, O noon of Naples, 

I bathe in thine beautj^ by thee embayed ! 

"V\'hat is it ails me that I should sing of her ? 

The queen of the flashes and flames that were ! 
Yea, I have felt the shuddering sting of her. 

The flower-sweet throat and the hands of her ! 
I have swayed and sung to the sound of her psalters, 

I have danced her dances of dizzy delight, 
I have hallowed mine hair to the horns of her altars, 

Between the nightingale's song and the night ! 

"What is it, Queen, that now I should do for thee ? 

"What is it now T should ask at thine hands ? 
Blow of the trumpets thine children once blew for thee ? 

Break from thine feet and thine bosom the bands ? 
Nay, as sweet as the songs of Leone Leoni, 

And gay as her garments of gem-sprinkled gold, 
She gives me mellifluous, mild macaroni. 

The choice of her childi'en when cheeses are old ! 

And over me hover, as if by the wings of it. 

Frayed in the furnace by flame that is fleet, 
The curious coils and the strenuous strings of it, 

Dropping, diminishing down, as I eat : 
Lo ! and the beautiful Queen, as she brings of it, 

Lifts me the links of the limitless chain, 
Bidding mine month chant the splcndidcst things of it, 

Out of the wealth of my wonderful brain ! 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 43 

Behold ! I have done it : my stomach is smitten 

With sweets of the surfeit her hands have unrolled. 
Italia, mine cheeks with thine kisses are bitten : 

I am broken with beauty, stabbed, slaughtered, and sold ! 
No man of thine millions is more macaronied. 

Save mighty Mazzini, than musical Me : 
The souls of the Ages shall stand as astonied, 

And faint in the flame I am fanning for thee ! 

The Ancient {laughing). Galahad, I can fancy 
your later remorse. It is not a year since you were ab- 
solutely Swinburne-mad, and I hardly dared, in your 
presence, to object even to " Anactoria " and " Dolores." 
I would not encourage you, then, for I saw you were 
carried away by the wild rush of the rhythm, and the 
sparkle of epithets which were partly new and seemed 
wholly splendid ; but now I will confess to you that as a 
purely rhythmical genius I look on Swinburne as a phe- 
nomenon in literature. ^ 

Galahad {eagerly). Then you admit that he is great ? 

The Ancient. Not as you mean. I have been wait- 
ing for his ferment to settle, as in the case of Keats and 
Shelley ; but there are no signs of it in his last volume. 
How splendidly the mind of Keats precipitated its crudity 
and redundancy, and clarified into the pure wine of " Hy- 
perion " ! In Shelley's case the process was slower, but 
it was steadily going on ; you will find the same thing 
in Schiller, in Drydeu, and many other poets, therefore I 
mean to reserve my judgment in Swinburne's case, and 
wait, at least until his next work is published. Mean- 
while, I grant that he has enriched our English lyric 
poetry with some new and admirable forms. 



44 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

The Ganxet. He has certainly made a " sensation " 
in tlie literary world ; does that indicate nothing ? 

The Axciext. That depends. I declare it seems to 
me as if the general taste Avere not quite healthy. To a 
very large class reading has become a form of lazy luxury, 
and such readers are not satisfied without a new great 
poet, every four or five years. Then, too, there has been 
an amazing deal of trash written about the coming authors, 
— what they should be, how they must write, and the like ; 
and so those luxurious readers are all the time believing 
they have discovered one of the tribe. Why, let a man 
take a thought as old as Confucius, and put it into some 
strange, jerky, convulsed form, and you will immediately 
hear the cry, " How wonderful ! how original ! " You 
all remember the case of Alexander Smith ; it seems in- 
credible, now, that the simulated passion and forced sen- 
timent of his "Life -Drama" should have been accepted 
as real, yet, because of this book, he was hailed as a second 
Shakespeare. Tiiis hunger of the luxurious reader for 
new flavors is a dangerous tiling for young poets. 

ZoiLiJS. I almost think I hear my own voice. "We 
don't often agree so thoroughly. 

The Anciext. So nmch the better. I wonder if 
you '11 be as well satisfied with the task I have in store for 
you ; here is the name. {Gicing him the slip ofpajier.) 

ZoiiLUS. Emerson ! I think I can guess why. 

The Axciext. Yes, I remember what you wrote when 
" Brahma " was first pubHshed, and what you said to 
Galahad the other evening. I confess I was amazed, at 
the time, that tlic newspapers should so innocently betray 
their ignorance. There was a universal cry of " iucom- 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 45 

preliensible ! " when the meaning of the poem was per- 
fectly plain. In fact, there are few authors so transpar- 
ently clear, barring a few idiosyncrasies of expression, 
which one soon learns, as just Emerson. 

ZoiLUS. Then explain to me those lines from "Al- 
phonso of Oastile " : — 

" Hear you then, celestial fellows ! 
Fits not to be over-zealous ; 
Steads not to work on the clean jump. 
And wine and brains perpetual pump ! " 

The Ancient. That is simply baldness of language 
(which Emerson sometimes mistakes for humor), not ob- 
scurity. I will not explain it ! Read the whole poem 
over again, and I 'm sure you will not need to ask me. 
But now, to your work ! Who will draw again ? 

The Gannet {drawhig). Ha! A friend, this time; 
and I wish he were here with us. Nobody would take 
more kindly to our fan than he. 

Galahad. I shall try no more, to-night. My imita- 
tion of Swinburne has exhausted me. I felt, while writ- 
ing, as Zoihis did when he was imitating Browning, — 
as if I could have gone on and on forever ! Really there 
is some sort of possession or demoniac influence in these 
experiments. They fascinate me, and yet I feel as if a 
spirit foreign to my own had seized n*ie, 

The' Ancient. Take another cigar ! I wish we had 

'the Meleager, or the Earnese torso, here ; five minutes of 

eiilier would surround you with a different atmosphere. 

I know precisely how it affects you. Thirty years ago, 

Tempus Edax, must I say tliirty ? when I dreamed hot 



46 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

dreams of fame, and "\yalked the streets in a mild delirium, 
pondering over the great and godlike powers pent within 
me, I had the same chills and fevers. I 'm not laugh- 
ing at you, my dear Galahad ; God forbid ! I only pray 
that there may be more vitality in the seeds which your 
dreams cover, than in mine. Waiter ! Our glasses are 
empty. 

(ZoiLUS and the GkT^'i'i'E.T co7itiuue to write: meantime, fresh 
glasses of beer are brought, and there is a brief silence) 

ZoiLUS. I suspect the Ancient will want to knock me 
on the head for this. {Reads.) 



ALL OR NOTHING. 

"Whoso answers my questions 

Knoweth more than me ; 
Hunger is but knowledge 

In a less degree : 
Prophet, priest, and poet 

Oft prevaricate, 
And the surest sentence 

Hath the greatest weight. 

When upon my gaiters 

Drops the morning dew, 
Somewhat of Life's riddle 

Soaks my spirit through. 
I am buskiucd by the goddess 

Of Monadnock's crest. 
And my wings extended 

Touch the East and West. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 47 

Or ever coal was hardened 

In the cells of earth. 
Or flowed the founts of Bourhon, 

Lo ! I had my birth. 
I am crowned coeval 

With the Saurian eggs, 
And my fancy firmly 

Stands on its own legs. 

Wouldst thou know the secret 

Of the barberry -bush. 
Catch the slippery whistle 

Of the moulting thrush. 
Dance upon the mushrooms. 

Dive beneath the sea, 
Or anything else remarkable. 

Thou must follow me ! 

The Ancient. Well, you have read somewhat more 
than I imagined, Zoilus, This is a fair imitation of tlie 
manner of some of Emerson's earlier poems ; but you 
may take heart, Galahad, if you fear the povi^er of associa- 
tion, for not one of the inimitable, imperishable passages 
lias been suggested. 

Zoilus. Now, seriously, do you mean to say that 
there are such ? 

The Ancient. 

" Still on the seeds of all he made 
The rose of beauty burns ; 
Through times that wear, and forms that fade, 
Immortal youth returns." 



48 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Galahad {drawing a long breath). How beautiful ! 
The Ancient. 

" Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, 
Or dip thy paddle in the lake. 
But it carves the bow of Beauty there, 

And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake." 

ZoiLUS. Peccavi ! 

The Ancient. Then I will lock up my half-unbolted 
thunders. The Master does not need my vindication ; 
and I should do him a poor service by trying to drive 
any one towards the recognition of his deserts, when all 
who think for themselves must come, sooner or later, to 
know him. 

The Gannet. But I never saw those stanzas ! 

The Ancient. Yet they are printed for all the world. 
The secret is simply this : Emerson cut from his limbs, 
long ago, the old theological fetters, as every independent 
thinker must. Those who run along in the ruts made by 
their grandfathers, unable to appreciate the exquisite fibre 
of liis intellect, tlie broad and grand eclecticism of his 
taste, suspect a heresy in every sentence which they are 
too coarsely textured to understand. Ko man of our day 
habitually lives in a purer region of thought. 

ZoiLUS {looking at his watch). Now, wc must know 
what the Gannet has been doing. 

The Gannet. My name was Edmund Clarence Stcd- 
man. 

The Ancient. One of the younger tribes, with some 
of whom 1 'm not so familiar. I have caught many of 
his "fugitives," in their llight, finding them of a kind 



DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 49 

sure to stay wliere they touch, instead of being blown 
quietly on until they pass forever out of the world. 
Tliere 's a fine masculine vibration in his lines : he sings 
in the major key, which young poets generally do not. 
I 'd be willing to bet that your imitation has a sportive, 
not a solemn, character. 

The Gannet. Why, in spite of your disclaimer, 
you 're not so ignorant. Your guess is right : therefore, 
listen ! (Reads.) 

THE GOLD-ROOM. 

An Idyl. 

They come from mansions far up -town, 

And from their countiy villas, 
And some, Charybdis' gulf whirls down. 

And some fall into Scylla's. 
Lo ! here young Paris climbs the stairs 

As if their slope were Ida's, 
And here his golden touch declares 

The ass's ears of Midas. 

It seems a Bacchic, brawling rout 

To every business -scoruer. 
But such, methinks, must be an " out," 

Or has not made a "corner." 
In me the rhythmic gush revives ; 

I feel a classic passion : 
We, also, lead Arcadian lives,. 

Though in a Broad-Street fashion. 

Old Battos, here, 's a leading bull. 
And Diomed a bear is, 

3 D 



50 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

And near them, shearing hankers' wool. 

Strides the Tiltonian Charis ; 
And Atys, there, has gone to smash, 

His every hill protested. 
While Cleon's eyes with comfort flash, — 

/ have his funds invested ! 

Mehercle ! 't is the same thing yet 

As in the days of Pindar : 
The Isthmian race, the dust and sweat. 

The prize — why, what 's to hinder ? 
And if I twang my lyre at times. 

They did so then, I reckon ; 
That man 's the hest at modern rhymes 

"Whom you can di'aw a check on ! 

Omnes {clapping their hands). Bravo ! 

The Ancient. To think of Stedniau's being the only 
voice in our literature which comes out of the business 
crowds of the whole country ! The man who can spend 
his days in a purely material atmosphere, and sing at 
night, has genuine pluck in him. It 's enough to make 
any green poet, who wails about the cruel world, and the 
harsh realities of life, and the beautiful realm of the ideal, 
ashamed of himself ! 

Galahad {annoyed). You don't mean as much as you 
say ! Every poet, green or not, must Iiave faith in an 
ideal. 

TuE Ancient {gen(lf). Ay, but if it make him 

" Pamijcr the coward heart 
"With feelings all too delicate for use," 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 51 

as Coleridge translates Schiller, it is a deceit and a snare 
to him. Your Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Goethe, 
were made of different claj. 

ZoiLUS. Here 's to their sublime Shades, wherever 
they may be wandering ! Out, to the last drop ! We 
ai-e in the small hours ; the Donne rwetters ! are all silent 
in the saloon, and Karl Schafer is probably snoring over 
his counter, waiting for us. Come ! \Tlxeunt. 




NIGHT THE THIRD. 




HEN the sportive tilting with liglit lances, the 
reciprocal, good-uatured chaffing, in which the 
members of the Club were wont to indulge on 
coming together, had subsided, the conversa- 
tion took the following turn : 

ZoiLUS {to The Ancient). I've been considering 
what you said the last time, about the prevalent literary 
taste not being entirely healthy. How far would you 
apply that verdict to the authors ? Their relative popu- 
larity is your only gauge for the character of the readers. 

The Ancient. I don't think I had any individual 
authors in my mind, at the time. But a great deal of all 
modern literature is ephemeral, created from day to day 
to supply a certain definite demand, and sinking out of 
sight, sooner or later. Nine readers out of ten make no 
distinction between this ephemeral material and the few 
works which really belong to our literary history ; that 
is, they confound the transitory with the permanent au- 
thors. 

ZoiLUS. So far, I agree with you. Now the inference 
M'ould be that those nine readers, who lack the iiner 
judgment, and who, of course, represent the prevalent 



DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 53 

taste, are responsible for tlie success of the transitory au- 
thors. But they do not make the latter; they do not 
even dictate the character of their Avorks : hence the 
school, no matter how temporary it may be, must be 
founded by the authors, — which obliges us to admit a 
certain degree of originality and power. 

The Ancient. I see where you are going ; let us 
have no reasoning in a ring, I pray you ! If you admit 
the two classes of authors, it is enough. I have already 
seen one generation forgotten, and I fancy I now see the 
second slipping the cables of their craft, and making 
ready to drop down stream with the ebb-tide. I remem- 
ber, for instance, that in 1840 there were many well- 
known and tolerably popular names, which are never 
heard now. Byron and Mrs. Hemans then gave the tone 
to poetry, and Scott, Bulwer, and Cooper to fiction. 
WiUis was, by all odds, the most popular American au- 
thor ; Longfellow was not known by the multitude, 
Emerson was only "that Transcendentalist," and Whit- 
tier "that Abolitionist." We young men used to talk 
of Rufus Dawes, and Charles Penno Hoffman, and Gren- 
ville Mellen, and Brainard, and Sands. Why, we even 
had a hope that sometliing wonderful would come out 
of Chivers ! 

Omnes. Chivers ? 

The Ancient. Have you never heard of Chivers ? 
He is a phenomenon ! 

The Gannet. Doesn't Poe speak of him some- 
where ? 

The Ancient. To be sure. Poe finished the ruin of 
him which Slielley began. Dr. Thomas Holley Chivers, 



54 DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

of Georgia, author of " Yirginalia/' "The Lost Pleiad," 
" Facets of Diamond," and " Eonchs of Kuby ! " 

ZoiLrs. What ! Come, now, this is only a ben 
trovato. 

The Axcient. Also of "Nacoochee, the Beautiful 
Star " ; and there "was still another Tolume, — six in all ! 
The British Musenm has the only complete set of his 
works. I speak the sober truth, Zoilus ; a friend of mine 
has three of the volumes, and I can show them to you. 
One of the finest images in modern poetry is in his 
"Apollo": — 

" Like cataracts of adamant, uplifted into mountains. 
Making oceans metropolitan, for the splendor of the dawn ! " 

Zoilus. Incredible ! 

The Anciext. I remember also a stanza of his 
"Rosalie Lee": — 

" Many mellow Cydonian suckets, 

Sweet apples, anthosmial, divine. 
From the ruhy-rimmed beryline buckets. 

Star-gemmed, lily-shaped, hyaline ; 
Like the sweet golden goblet found growing 

On the wild emerald cucumber-tree. 
Rich, brilliant, like chrysoprase glowing, 

"Was my beautiful Rosalie Lee ! " 

Zoilus. Hold, hold ! I can endure no more. 

The Ancient. You see wliat comes of a fashion in 
literature. There was many a youth in tliosc days who 
made attempts just as idiotic, in the columns of country 
papers ; and perhaps the most singular circumstance 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 55 

was, that very few readers laughed at them. Why, 
there are expressions, epithets, images, which run all 
over the land, and sometimes last for a generation, I 
once discovered that with both the English and German 
poets of a hundred years ago, evening is always called 
brown, and morning either rosij or purple. Just now the 
fashion runs to jewelry ; we have ruby lips, and topaz 
light, and sapphire seas, and diamond air. Mrs. Brown- 
ing even says : — 

" Her cheelcs pale opal burnt with a red and restless spark ! " 

What sort of a cheek must that be ? Then we have such 
a wealth of gorgeous color as never was seen before, — 
no quiet half-tints, but pure pigments, laid on with a pal- 
let-knife. Eeally, I sometimes feel a distinct sense of 
fatigue at the base of the optic nerve, after reading a 
magazine story. The besetting sin of the popular — not 
the best — authors is the intense. 

ZoiLUS. Why do you call intensity of expression a 
sin ? 

^ The Ancient. I mean intensity of epithet: the 
strongest expression is generally the briefest and barest. 
Take the old ballads of any people, and you will find few 
adjectives. The singer says : " He laughed ; she wept." 
Perhaps the poet of a more civilized age might say : "He 
laughed in scorn ; she turned away and shed tears of 
disappointment." But nowadays, the ambitious young 
writer must produce something like this : "A hard, 
fiendish laugh, scornful and pitiless, forced its passage 
from his throat through the lips that curled in mockery 
of her appeal; she covered her despairing face, and a 



56 DIVERSIONS OP THE ECHO CLUB. 

gust and whirlwind of sorrowing agony burst forth in her 
irresistible tears ! " 

Omnes {clappimj their hands). Go on ! Go on ! 

The Ancient. It is enough of the Bowery, for to- 
night. 

Galahad. 0, you forget the intenser life of our day ! 
I see the exaggeration of which you speak, but I believe 
something of it comes from the struggle to express more. 
All our senses have grown keener, our natures respond 
more delicately, and to a greater range of influences, than 
those of the generations before ns. There is a finer 
moral development ; our aims in life have become spirit- 
ualized ; we may have less power, less energy of genius, 
but we move towards higher and purer goals. 

ZoiLUS. The writers of Queen Anne's time might 
have compared themselves in the same way with their 
predecessors in Charles II. 's. What if your own poems 
should be considered coarse and immoral a hundred years 
hence ? 

Galahad {bewildered). What has that to do with the 
question ? 

The Ancient. Only this ; that there are eternal laws 
of Art, to which the moral and spiritual aspirations of 
tlie author, which are generally relative to his own or 
the preceding age, must conform, if they would also 
become eternal. 

The Gannet. Very fine, iudeed ; but you arc all for- 
getting our business. 

ZoiLUS. Let us first add a fresli supply of names. 

The Gannet. Write them yourself; we shall other- 
wise repeat. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 57 

(Zoi'Lus writes a dozen or more slips, whereupon they draw) 

Gala-HAD. Daute E.ossetti ! 

ZoiLUS. I have Barry Cornwall. 

The Gannet. And I — Whittier. 

Omnes. Whittier must not be parodied. 

Galahad (earnestly). Draw another name ! 

The Ancient. Why ? 

Galahad. There is at once an evidence of what I 
said ! Where are your jewelry and colors ? On the 
other side, where will you find an intenser faith, a more 
ardent aspiration for truth and good ? The moral and 
spiritual element is so predominant in him, — so wedded 
for time and eternity to his genius as a poet, — that you 
cannot imitate him without seeming to slight, or in some 
way oflPend, what should be as holy to us as to him ! 

The Ancient [lai/lng his hand on Galahad's shoul- 
der). My dear boy, Whittier deserves all the love and 
reverence you are capable of giving him. He is just as 
fine an illustration of my side of the question : his poetic 
art has refined and harmonized that moral quality in his 
nature, which, many years ago, made his poetry seem 
partisan, and, therefore, not unmixed poetry. But the 
alloy (in a poetic sense, only) has been melted out in the 
pure and steady flame of his intellect, and the preacher 
in him has now his rightful authority because he no longer 
governs the poet. As for those poems which exhale de- 
votion and aspiration as naturally as a violet exhales odor, 
there is no danger of tlie Gannet imitating them ; he has 
not the power even if he had the will. But Whittier has 
also written — 

The Gannet. Don't you see I 'm hard at work ? 
3* 



58 DIVERSIONS OP THE ECHO CLUB. 

What do you mean by dictating what I may or may not 
do ? I am ah'eady well launched, and {declaiming) " I 
seek no change ; and, least of all, such change as you 
■would give me ! " 

The Ancient. I can't help you, Galahad; go on 
with your own work now. I have drawn one of the 
youngsters, this time, and mean to turn him over to you 
when you have slaughtered E,ossetti. 

Galahad. Who is he ? 

The Ancient. A brother near your throne. 

ZoiLus {to The Ancient). I have done Barry Corn- 
wall ; it 's an easy task. He is nearly always very brief. 
His are not even short swallow-flights of song, but little 
hops from one twig to another. While Galahad and the 
Gaunet are finishing theirs, repeat to me something more 
of Chivers ! 

The Ancient. I can only recall fragments, here and 
there. The refrain to a poem called " The Poet's Voca- 
tion," in the " Eonchs of Ruby," is : — 

" In the music of the morns, 

Blown through the Conchimarian horns, 
Down the dark vistas of the rehoantic Norns, 
To the Genius of Eternity, 
Crying : ' Come to me ! Come to mc ! ' " 

ZoiLUS. Ye gods ! It is amazing. Why can't you 
write a stanza in his manner ? 

The Ancient {smiling). I think I can even equal 
him. 

{lie takes a 'pencil and ivrites rap'idli/. Jitst as lie Jiuis/zcs, 
Galahad and The Gannet lag domi their pencils and 
leaji back in their seats.) 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 59 



The Chorus {eagerly). We must first hear the An- 
cient ! He is a medium for the great Chivers. 

The Ancient. I have been merciful towards you. 
One stanza will sujQBice. {Reads.) 

Beloved of the wanderer's father 
That walks mid the agates of June, 

The wreaths of remorse that I gather 
"Were torn from the turrets of Rune ; 

When the star-patterns broidered so brilliant 
Shone forth from the diapered blue, 

And the moon dropped her balsam scintilliant. 
Soul-nectar for me and for you ! 

The Gannet. Send for a physician ; tie a wet towel 
around his head ! A tliousand years hence, when the 
human race comes back to polytheism, Chivers will be 
the god of all crack-brained authors. 

The Ancient. I recognize a fantastic infection. 
Come, Zoilus, give me a tonic ! 

ZoiLUS. Wine has become a -very fashionable tonic, 
and that is just what I have put into Barry Cornwall's 
mouth. {Reads.) 

SONG. 

Talk of dew on eglantine, — 
Stuff! the poet's drink is wine. 
Black as quaffed by old King Death, 
That which biteth, maddeneth ; 
For my readers fain would see 
What effect it has on me. 



60 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Nose may redden, head may swim, 
Joints be loose in every limb. 
And the golden rhymes I chant 
Sheer away on wings aslant. 
Whale may whistle, porpoise roll. 
Yet I '11 di-ain the gentle bowl ! 

Pleasure's dolphin gambols near ; 
Virtue's mackerel looks austere ; 
Duty's hippopotamus 
Waddles forward, leaving us ; 
Joy, the sturgeon, leaps and soars, 
While we coast the Teian shores ! 

The AxcieisT. What a fearful Bacchanalian you have 

made of good and gentle Barry Cornwall ! You must 

have been possessed by Poe's " Imp of the Perverse," to 

yoke his manner to such a subject. I was expecting to 

hear something of spring and clover and cowslips. Faith ! 

I believe I could improvise an imitation. Wait a second ! 

Now: — 

When spring returneth. 

And cowslips blow, 
The milkmaid churneth 

Her creamy snow. 
The mill-wheel spurneth 

The stream below ; 
The cherry-tree skippeth in earth and air. 
The small bird callcth : beware, prepare ! 
And all is fair ! 

OiOTES. Another stanza ! 

TuE Ancient. 0, you have but to turn things up- 
side down, and there it is : — 



DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 61 

The cold wind bloweth 

O'er brake and burn, 
The cream o'erfloweth 

The tilted churn, 
The mill-wheel sloweth, 

And fails to turn ; 
The cherry-tree sheddeth her leaves in the fall, 
The crow and the clamoring raven call. 
And that is all ! 

But, seriously, Galahad, after what Zo'ilus has done, I 
am a little afraid of the Gannet's work. Suppose he 
should make our beloved Whittier 

" Troll a careless tavern -catch 
Of Moll and iMeg, and strange experiences 
Unmeet for ladies " ? 

Galahad {earnestly). Then I should withdraw fron> 
the Club. 

The Gannet. Prythee, peace, young hotspur! I'll 
agree to start with you for Massachusetts by to-morrow 
morning's express train, and lay before the poet what 
I 've written. If he does n't laugh heartily, on reading 
it, I '11 engage to come all the way back afoot. 

The Ancient. We can decide for him : read ! 

The Gannet. It is a ballad of New England life 
which you shall hear. {Reads.) 

THE BALLAD OF HIRAM HOVER. 

"Where the Moosatockmaguntic 
Pours its waters in the Skuntic, 

Met, along the forest-side, 

Hiram Hover, Huldah Hyde. 



62 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

She, a maiden fair aud dapper, 
He, a red-haired, stalwart trapper. 

Hunting beaver, mink, and skunk. 
In the woodlands of Squeedunk. 

She, Pentucket's pensive daughter. 
Walked beside the Skuntic water, 
Gathering, in her apron wet, 
Snakeroot, mint, and bouncing-bet. 

" Why," he murmured, loath to leave her, 
" Gather yarbs for chills and fever. 
When a lovj^er, bold and true. 
Only waits to gather you ? " 

" Go," she answered, " I 'm not hasty ; 

I prefer a man more tasty : 

Leastways, one to please me well 
Should not have a beasty smell." 

"Haughty Huldah ! " Hiram answered; 

" Mind and heart alike are cancered : 
Jest look here ! these peltries give 
Cash, wherefrom a pair may live. 

" I, you think, am but a vagrant. 
Trapping beasts by no means fragrant ; 
Yet — I 'm sure it 's worth a thank - 
I 've a handsome sum in bank." 

Turned and vanished Hiram Hover ; 

Aud, before the yOar was over, 

Huldah, with the yarbs she sold. 
Bought a cape, against the cold. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 63 

Black and thick the furry cape was ; 
Of a stylish cut the shape was ; 

And the girls, in all the town. 

Envied Huldah up and down. 

Then, at last, one winter morning, 

Hiram came, without a warning : 

" Either," said he, " you are hlind, 
Huldah, or you 've changed your mind. 

" Me you snub for trapping varmints. 
Yet you take the skins for garments : 

Since you wear the skunk and mink. 

There 's no harm in me, I think." 

" "Well," said she, " we will not quarrel, 
Hiram : I accept the moral. 

Now the fashion 's so, I guess 

I can't hardly do no less." 

Thus the trouble all was over 
Of the love of Hiram Hover ; 

Thus he made sweet Huldah Hyde 

Huldah Hover, as his hride. 

Love employs, with equal favor. 

Things of good and evil savor ; 

That, which iirst appeared to part. 
Warmed, at last, the maiden's heart. 

Under one impartial hanner. 
Life, the hunter, Love, the tanner. 

Draw, from every heast they snare, 

Comfort for a Avedded pair ! 



64 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

ZoiLUS. The Gannet distances us all to-niglit. Even 
Galahad is laugh hig. yet, and I saw, Avheu the reading 
began, that he was resolved not to smile, if he could help 
it. What does our Ancient think ? 

The Ancient. It does, certainly, suggest the style 
of some of Whittier's delightful ballads, only substituting 
a comical for an earnest motive. Change that motive 
and a few expressions, and it would become a serious 
poem. The Gannet was lucky in striking the proper key 
at the start. And here, perhaps, is one result of our 
diversions, upon which we had not calculated, over aiid 
above the fun. I don't see why poets should not drill 
themselves in all that is technical, as well as painters, 
sculptors, opera-singers, or even orators. All the facul- 
ties called into play to produce rhythm, harmony of 
words, richness of the poetical dialect, choice of keys and 
cadences, may be made nimbler, more active, and more 
obedient to command, by even mechanical practice. I 
never rightly believed in the peculiar solemnity of the 
poet's gift ; every singer should have a gay, sportive side 
to his nature. I am sure the young Shakespeare would 
have heartily joined in what we are here doing; the 
young Goethe, we know, did many a similar thing. He 
was a capital improvvisatore ; and who knows how much 
of his mastery over all forms of poetry may not have come 
from just sucli gymnastics ? 

Galahad. Might not an aptness in representing the 
manner of others — like 1 hat of an actor who assumes a 
different character every night — indicate some lack of 
original force ? 

The Ancient. The comparison is deceptive. Au 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 65 

actor's sole business is to assume other individualities. 
What we do is no more than every novelist does, in talk- 
ing as a young girl, an old man, a saint, or a sinner. If 
anything of yourself is lost in the process, and you can't 
get it back again, why — let it go ! 

ZoiLUS. You have it now, Galahad ! 

Galahad. Well, I '11 cover my confusion by transfer- 
ring myself into Dante Gabriel Rossetti. {Beads.) 

CIMABUELLA. 

I. 

Fair-tinted cheeks, clear eyelids drawn 

In crescent curves above the light 
Of eyes, whose dim, uncertain dawn 

Becomes not day : a forehead white 
Beneath long yellow heaps of hair : 
She is so strange she must he fair. 



Had she sharp, slant-wise wnngs outspread. 
She were an angel ; hut she stands 

"With flat dead gold behind her head. 
And lilies in her long thin hands : 

Her folded mantle, gathered in. 

Falls to her feet as it were tin. 

III. 

Her nose is keen as pointed flame ; 

Her crimson lips no thing express ; 
And never dread of saintly blame 

Held down her heavy eyelashes : 



Q6 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

To guess what she were thinking of 
Precludeth any meaner love. 

IV. 

An azure carpet, fringed with gold. 
Sprinkled Avith scarlet spots, I laid 

Before her straight, cool feet unrolled : 
But she nor sound nor movement made 

(Albeit I heard a soft, shy smile. 

Printing her neck a moment's while) ; 

V. 

And I was shamed through all my mind 
For that she spake not, neither kissed, 

But stared right past me. Lo ! behind 
JNIe stood, in pink and amethyst. 

Sword-girt and velvet-doubleted, 

A taU, gaunt youth, with frowzy head. 



Wide nostrils in the air, dull eyes. 
Thick lips that simpered, but, ah me ! 

I saw, with most forlorn surprise. 
He was the Thirteenth Centuiy, 

I but the Nineteenth ; then despair 

Curdled beneath my curling hair. 

VIT. 

O, Love and Fate ! IIow could she choose 
My rounded outlines, broader brain. 

And my resuscitated Muse ? 

Some tears she shed, but whether pain 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 67 

Or joy in him unlocked their source, 
I could not fathom which, of course. 



But I from missals, quaintly bound. 

With cither and with clavichord 
Will sing her songs of sovran sound : 

Belike her pity will afford 
Such faint return as suits a saint 
So sweetly done in verse and paint. 

The Gannet. Galahad! Who could have ex- 
pected this of you? 

Galahad. You know I like Rossetti's poems, but, 
really, I could n't help it, after I once got under way. 

The Gannet. Rossetti is picturesque, whatever else 
he may not be. His poetry has a delicate flavor of its 
own, and that is much to me, in these days, when so 
many dishes seem to be cooked with the same sauce. A 
poet is welcome to go back to the thirteenth century, if 
he only fetches us pictures. Poetry belongs to luxurious 
living, as much as painting and music ; hence we must 
value color, rhythmical eifect, quaint and unexpected play 
of fancy, and every otlier quality that makes verse bright 
and sparkling. The theme is of less importance. Take, 
for instance, Victor Hugo's Orientales. 

ZoiLUS. Pray, let us not open that discussion again ! 
You know, already, how far 1 go with you, and just 
wliere Galahad and The Ancient stand. We should 
rather confine ourselves directly to the authors we imi- 
tate. Now, I think Rossetti's book on the Early Italian 
Poets better than his own poems. Perhaps it was the 



68 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

attempt to reproduce those poets in English which has 
given the mediaeval coloring to his verse. We cannot 
undertake to say how much of the manner is natural, and 
how much assumed ; for a thirteenth or even a second 
century nature may be born nowadays. But it is none 
the less out of harmony with our thought and feeling, and 
the encouragement of such a fashion in literature strikes 
me as being related to the Pre-Raphaelite hallucination 
in art. I should like to have tlie Ancient's opinion on 
this point. 

The Ancient. Here is your other name, Galahad. 
{Gices him a slip of paper.) If there were not so much 
confusion of taste, Zo'ilus, — such an uncertainty in re- 
gard to the unchanging standards of excellence, in litera- 
ture and art, — I could answer you in a few words. We 
must judge these anaclironistic developments (as they 
seem) by those which provoked them. A movement may 
be false in itself, yet made necessary by some antecedent 
illusion or inanity. If you want to leave port, almost 
any craft will answer. I might carry out the image, and 
add that we never can foresee what side-winds may come 
to force the vessel to some other shore than that for which 
she seems bound. I have carefully read Rossetti's book, 
as one of the many phenomena of the day. It seems to 
me that tliere is a genuine thread of native poetry in 
him, but so encumbered with the burden of color, sensu- 
ous expression, and mediaeval imagery and drapery, that 
it often is nearly lost. What I have heard of the author 
cx|)lains to me the existence of the volume ; but its im- 
mediate poj)ularity is something wliich I should not have 
anticipated. 



DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 69 

Galahad. I have written. 

The Gannet. Already ? Who was it, then ? 

Galahad. A personal friend, whose poems I know by 
heart, — Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Therefore, I could n't 
well avoid violating our rule, for a special little rhyme 
popped into my head, and imitated myself. If Aldrich 
were not living in Boston, we should have him here with 
us to-night, and he would be quite ready to burlesque 
himself. {Reach.) 

PALABRAS GRANDIOSAS. 

I lay i' the bosom of the sun, 

Under the roses dappled and dun. 

I thought of the Sultan Gingerheer, 

In his palace heside the Bendemcer, 

With his Affghan guards and his eunuchs blind, 

And the harem that stretched for a league behind. 

The tulips hent i' the summer hreeze, 

Under the broad chrysanthemum-trees, 

And the minstrel, playing his culverin, 

Made for mine ears a merry din. 

If I were the Sultan, and he were I, 

Here i' the grass he should loafing lie. 

And T should bestride my zebra steed, 

And ride to the hunt of the centipede : 

While the pet of the harem, Dandeline, 

Should fill me a crystal bucket of wine, 

And the kislar aga, Up-to-Snuff, 

Should wipe my mouth when I sighed, " Enough ! " 

And the gay court-poet, Fearfulbore, 

Should sit in the hall when, the hunt was o'er. 



70 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

And chant me songs of silvery tone. 
Not from Hafiz, but — mine own ! 

Ah, wee sweet love, beside me here, 
I am not the Sultan Gingei'beer, 
Nor you the odalisque Dandeline, 
Yet I am yom-n, and you are mine ! 

The Ancient. Tliere 's a delicate, elusive quality 
about Aldricli's short lyrics, which I should think very 
difficult to catch. I have an indistinct recollection of 
poor George Arnold writing something, 

ZoiLUS. It was all about a mistake Aldrich made, 
years ago, in the color of a crocus. He call it red, and 
there may be red crocuses for aught I know ; but yellow 
or orange is the conventional color. Of course we didn't 
let the occasion slip ; we were all unmerciful towards 
each other, I remember I wrote something like this : — 

I walked in the garden, ruffled with rain, 
Through the blossoms of every hue ; 

And I saw the pink, with its yellow stain. 
And the rose, with its bud of blue. 

George Arnold's lines were : — 

And all about the porphyry plates were stre^vn 
The blue arbutus of the early June, 
The crimson lemon and the purple yam, 
And dainties brought from Seringapatam ! 

The Gannet. Tliey are better than yours. Well, 
I 'm glad that Galaliad lias not confused our color, at 
least. I specially like Aldrich ; for he is faithful to his 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 71 

talent, and gives us nothing that is not daintily polished 
and rounded. Some of his fragments remind me of 
Genoese liHgree-work, there seems to be so much elabora-.. 
tion in a small compass ; yet only sport, not labor, is 
suggested. He, also, has ceased to sing in the minor 
key ; but I don't think he ever affected it much. 

The Ancient {earnestly) . I 'm glad to hear it ! 
ye cheerful gods of ail great poets, shall vi^e never have 
an end of weeping and wailing and lamentation ! Is the 
world nothing but a cavern of sorrow, and the individual 
life a couch of thorns ? Must we have always bats, and 
never skylarks, in the air of poetry ? 

ZoiLUS. Hear, hear ! I have not seen the Ancient 
so roused this many a day. 

The Ancient. The truth always excites. 

Galahad. Before you put on your hats, let us have 
one more " lager." {The glasses are filled?) Now, to 
the health of all our young authors ! 

The Gannet. Here's to them heartily, — for that 
includes ourselves. 

The Ancient. As the youngest, I return thanks. 

\Tlxeunt. 




NIGHT THE FOURTH. 




LL the members of tlie club were assembled, 
but the Aucieut had not yet made his appear- 
I'i ance. He was dming that eveuing, as it hap- 
pened, with a wealthy banker, and there was 
no possibility of omitting one of the seventeen courses, 
or escaping before the coffee and liqueurs. As the oldest 
of the members, the duties of chairman were always con- 
ferred on him whenever a decision became necessary, and 
all assumed, as a matter of course, that the Diversions 
should be suspended until his arrival. But the conversa- 
tion, meanwhile, settled upon him as its subject. Zoilus 
and one of the Chorus were not as old acquaintances as 
the Ganuet and Galahad, which circumstance led, after 
his nature had been genially discussed, to the following 
digression : — 

Zoilus {fo The Gaxnet). I had not often met him 
familiarly, in tliis way, before. He is a good, mellow- 
uatured companion, and not at all dogmatic, that is, iu a 
direct way ; but I can see tlie influence of liis Boston 
associations. There is a great deal of external tact and 
propriety in that city. Now, our impetuous, keen, inci- 
sive atmosphere — 



DIVEUSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 73 

The Gannet (jut emitting). Spare me the "incisive" ! 
It has been overdone, as an effect, and will be the ruin of 
you, yet. If I had as much faith as Galahad there, I 
should believe as the Ancient does. But, since you will 
have tlie " incisive," where can you find sentences more 
clearly cut — the very intaglio of style — than in Holmes ? 

ZoiLUS {cmrjrily) . And do you remember what he 
wrote of our New York authors, — 

" Whose fame, beyond their own abode, 
Extends — for miles along the Harlem road " ? 

The Gannet. Yes, and don't you know wdio they 
were ? Why, their fame does n't reach up to Twenty- 
third Street, now ! It ^vas a deliberate attempt, by a 
small clique, to manufacture the Great American Litera- 
ture, The materials were selected in advance, the style 
and manner settled, and then the great authors went to 
work. Like the Chinese mechanics who copied a steam- 
boat, the external imitation was perfect ; but there w^ere 
no inside works, and it would n't move a paddle ! When 
you speak of our legitimate authors, here in New York, 
what name first comes to your lips ? Bryant, of course ; 
and have you forgotten how Holmes celebrated him ? and 
how his was the only garland of verse thrown upon Ilal- 
leck's grave ? 

ZoiLUS. Nevertheless, they systematically depreciate 
what we do ; they are only kind and considerate towards 
one another. You remember Poe's experience ? 

The Ancient {entering the room). Which one, pray ? 

ZoiLUS. Of Boston. But they did not and have not 
put him down ! 

4 



74 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

The A^^cient. Wliy, no ; he put himself down, that 
time : I happened to be there, and I saw the performance. 
I guess that you and the Gannet have been repeating your 
usual tilt ; why not say, as Goethe did of the comparisons 
made between himself and Schiller, " Instead of quarrel- 
ling about which of us is the greater, people ought simply 
to be thankful for having us both " ? Thirty or forty 
years ago, when Lowell and Whipple were boys, Long- 
fellow and Holmes young authors, Emerson considered 
little better than daft, and Whittier almost outlawed on 
account of his antislavery opinions, the literary society 
here included Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Willis, and Hal- 
leck, then the foremost American authors. Tlie chief 
literary periodicals were here and in Philadelphia ; and 
Boston, altliough the average of intellectual culture was 
always higher there than elsewhere, occupied quite a sec- 
ondary place. But I don't remember that there was ever 
any jealousy or rivalry ; and I coufess I can't understand 
the spirit which fosters such a feeling now. 

ZoiLUS. You have passed the age when you care for 
recognition. '' 

The AjfCiENT. Have I, indeed? Pray, wlien does 
tliat age cease ? If I had a more general recognition, at 
present, — by which I mean the ascription to me of ex- 
actly the literary qualities which I tliiuk I possess, — I 
should be stimulated to do more and possibly better work. 
I began authorship at a time when tliere was not much 
discrimination between varieties of literary talent, when 
such fearful stuff as " Agathe, a Necromaunt : in Three 
Chimfcras," by a man named Tasistro, was published in 
" Graham's Magazine," and when a dentist in Rhode 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 75 

Island wrote a poem in heroic verse, called " The Den- 
tiad." 

Tpie Gannet. What was his name ? 

The Ancient. Solyman Browu. I must quote to 
you an exquisite passage : — 

" Whene'er along the ivory disks are seen 
The rapid traces of the dark gangrene. 
When caries come, with stealthy pace, to throw 
Corrosive ink-spots on those hanks of snow, 
Brook no delay, ye trembling, snflfering Fair, 
But fly for refuge to the dentist's care. 
His practised hand, obedient to his will. 
Employs the slender file with nicest skill ; 
Just sweeps the gerniin of disease away. 
And stops the fearful progress of decay." 

ZoiLUS. The latest nursling of Darwin's " Botanic 
Garden " ! It is not antitlietical enough for Pope. 
Surely, that was not a popular poem ? 

The Ancient. I was too young to know. I only 
mention it as one of the chaotic elements out of which 
has grown what little permanent literature we now have. 
Probably three fourths of the writers then commencing 
their career might have developed some sound practical 
ability, with a little intelligent guidance ; they were not 
strong enough to beat their own way out of the wilder- 
ness. When I look back upon the time, I can see the 
bones of immortal works bleaching on all sides. 

The Gannet. As ours will bleach for the young fel- 
lows who sit here in 1900 ! While you were speaking, 
the thought occurred to me that no young poet in Eng- 



76 DIVEUSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

land can possibly be as green at liis entrance into litera- 
ture as the most of us must inevitably be. I begin to see 
that a conventional standard is better than none ; for if it 
does not guide, it provokes resistance ; either way, there- 
fore, the neophyte acquires a definite form and style. 

The Ancient. To that extent, I agree with you. 
But we also have a standard, only those who accept it are 
fewer, and so scattered over the whole country that their 
authority is not immediately felt. They distinguish be- 
tween what is temporary and what is permanent, in spite 
of the general public. And tliis ought to be our great 
comfort, if we are in earnest, that no power on earth can 
keep alive a sensational reputation. 

ZoiLUS. How do you account for the popularity of 
such single poems as " The River of Time," (is that the 
title of it ?) and " Beautiful Snow," and " Rock me to 
sleep. Mother ? " Why, hardly a week passes, but I see 
a newspaper dispute about the authorship of one or the 
other of them ! To me they are languishing sentiment, 
not poetry. 

The Ancient. " Sentiment " sufficiently accounts for 
their popularity. Put some tender, thoroughly obvious 
sentiment into rhyme which sounds like the melody of a 
popular song, and it M'ill go through hides which are im- 
pervious to the keenest arrows of the imagination. But 
liuw much more unfortunate for us, if it were not so ! 
This gives us just the fulcrum we need if our literature is 
ever to be an Archimedean lever. I find myself a great 
deal happier since I have set about discovering the rea- 
son of these manifestations of immature taste, instead of 
lamenting over them, or cursing them, as I once did. 



DIVEHSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 77 

ZoiLUS {ironically). Then I have not attained your 
higher stand-point ? 

The Gannet {offering him the hat). Here, pick out 
one of the caged birds, and make him sing ! The prehide 
of chords and discords has hxsted long enough ; let the 
orcliestra now fall into a lively melody. 

ZoiLUS. Ila ! How shall I manage Bryant ? 

Galahad. Or I, Oliver Wendell Holmes ? 

The Gannet. Or I, N. P. Willis ? 

Galahad. Let us either exchange, or deal again ! 

The Ancient. No ! As chairman, I declare such a 
proposition out of order. You must not pick out those 
authors with Avhose manner you are most familiar, or 
whom you could most easily imitate. Tfiat would be no 
fair and equal test ; and there must be a little emulation, 
to keep your faculties in nimble playing condition, I am 
as oddly tasked as either of you, — see, I have drawn 
Tennyson ! — yet, for the sake of good example, I '11 work 
with you this time. Let us surrender ourselves, like 
spiritual mediums, to the control of the first stray idea 
that enters our brains : anything whatever will do for a 
point to start from. I am curious to know what will 
come of it. 

ZoiLUS. So am I. Here goes. {Writes) 

The Gannet. We must first have our glasses filled ; 
Galahad, ring for the waiter ! 
{A silence of fifteen or txventy minides follovjs. As the first 

one who has completed his task lifts his head loith a sigh of 

relief, the others write with a nervous haste ; hat all wait 

for the last one) 

The Gannet. You were ready first, Zoilus. 



78 DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Zo'iLUS. Then it was not because I had the least diffi- 
cult task. Perhaps our Ancient can tell me why it is so 
difficult to make an echo for Bryant's verse. To parody 
any particular poem, such as " The Deatli of the Plow- 
ers," would be easy enough, I should think ; but I was 
obliged to write something independent in Bryant's man- 
ner. Now, when I asked myself, "What is his manner ? " 
I could only answer, " Gravity of subject and treatment, 
pure rhythm, choice diction, and a mixture more or less 
strong of the moral element." 

The Ancient. You have fairly stated his prominent 
characteristics, and your difficulty came from the fact that 
they are all so evenly and exquisitely blended in his verse, 
tliat no single one seems salient enough to take hold of. 
Bryant's range of subjects is not wide, but within that 
range he is a most admirable artist. He is of the same 
blood with Wordsworth, — a brotlier, not a follower, — 
and oftentimes seems cold, because his intellectual pitch 
is high. I confess / find the powers of control, temper- 
ance, self-repression, abnegation of sentiment for a pur- 
pose which aims beyond it, in his poems, rather than a 
negative coldness. His literary position, it is true, is 
very isolated. He has both kept aloof from the tempo- 
rary excitements in our poetic atmosphere, and he has 
rarely given any direct expression of an aspiration for the 
general literary development of our people, or of sym- 
pathy with those who felt and fostered it. Nevertheless, 
we cannot fairly go beyond an author's works, in our 
judgments; and I suspect we shall all agree, as Ameri- 
cans, in estimating tlie amount of our debt to Bryant. 

Galahad. You have so put down my natural rcver- 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 79 

ence tliat I don't dare to protest. But when I see 
Bryant in Broadway, with his magnificent Homeric 
beard, I wonder the people don't take off their hats as 
he passes. Why, seventy years ago, the stoHd Beiiiners 
almost carried Schiller on their shoulders as he came out 
of the theatre ; the raging mob of '48 did homage to 
Humboldt ; and every other people, it seems to me, in 
every other civilized land, has rendered some sort of 
honor to its minstrels. But I cannot recollect that we 
have ever done anything. 

The Gannet. Yes, we have done a little, but not 
much, — after death. A few men have given Halleck a 
monument, and two men have put up busts of Irving and 
Bryant in our parks. There was a public commemora- 
tion of Cooper, at which Webster (who knew nothing 
and cared nothing about our literature) officiated ; but 
that was the end of it. The Bryant Festival was almost 
a private matter ; the public was not represented, and 
one author belonghig to the same club refused to take 
any part in it, on account of the political views of the 
poet ! 

The Ancient. We are forgetting our business. 
Zuilus has the floor. 

ZoJLLUS. I told you I had a hard task ; therefore I 
shall not be vexed if you tell me 1 have failed. {Reads.) 

THE DESERTED BARN. 

Against the gray November sky. 
Beside the weedy lane, it stands ; 

To newer fields they all pass by, 

The farmers and their harvest hands. 



80 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

There is no hay within the mow ; 

The racks and mangers fall to dust ; 
The roof is crumbling in, hut thou. 

My soul, inspect it and be just. 

Once from the green and Avinding vale 
The sheaves were borne to deck its floor ; 

The blue -eyed milkmaid filled her pail. 
Then gently closed the stable door. 

Once on the frosty Avinter air 

The sound of flails afar was borne. 

And from his natural pulpit there 

The preacher cock called up the morn. 

But all are gone : the harvest men 
Work elsewhere now for higher pay ; 

The blue-eyed milkmaid married Ben, 
The hand, and went to loway. 

The flails are banished by machines. 

Which thrash the grain with equine power ; 

The senile cock no longer weans 

The folk from sleep at dawning hour. 

They slumber late beyond the hill. 

In that new house which spurus the old ; 

In gorgeous stalls the kiue are still. 
The horse is blanketed from cold. 

But I from ostentatious pride 
And hollow pomp of riches turn. 

To muse that ancient barn beside : 
Pause, pilgrim, and its lesson learn ; 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 81 

So live, that thou shalt never make 
A mill-pond of the mountain-tarn. 

Nor for a gaudy stable take 

The timbers of thy ruined barn ! 

Galahad. I vow I don't know whetlier that is seri- 
ous, or a burlesque imitation ! 

The Ancient. Then Zoilus lias fairly succeeded. 
The grave, autumnal tone was indispensable, for it 
stamps itself on the minds of nine out of teu who read 
Bryant; just as we always associate Wordsworth with 
momitain walks and solitary musings. Did you ever see 
Kuntze's statuette of Bryant ? He is sitting, and beside 
him, on the ground, there is only a buffalo-skull. Of 
course, you at once imagine a prairie mound, with noth- 
ing in sight, — which is carrying the impression alto- 
gether too far ; for his poems on the apple-tree and the 
bobolink are entirely human. 

Galahad {earnestly). There is much more than that 
in his poetry ! There is the evidence of a high imagina- 
tive quality, which, for some reason or other, he seems to 
hold in check ! Read " The Land of Dreams " and his 
poem on " Earth," where there is something about the 

" Hollows of the great invisible hills 
Where darkness dwells all day — " 

I can't remember all the passage, but it is exceedingly 
fine ! Generally, he reins himself up so tightly that you 
cannot feel the fretting of the bit ; but rarely, when he 
lets himself go, for a few lines, you get a glimpse of an- 
other nature. 

4* F 



82 divehsions of the echo club. 

The Ancient. Just tlierein, I think, lies bis greatest 
service to American literature. There have always been, 
and always will be, enough of wild mustangs, unbridled 
foals, who dash off at a gallop and can't stop themselves 
at the proper goal, but pant and stagger a mile beyond 
it. With Bryant's genius, he might have undertaken 
much more ; but he has hoarded his power, and how 
freshly it serves him still ! 

" No waning of fire, no quenching of ray. 
But rising, still rising, then passing away." 

Wlio wrote those lines ? 

The Gannet. He who speaks through me to-night, 
— Willis. But Galahad comes next in order. 

Galahad. I have really a better right to complain of 
the severity of my task than Zoilus. One can't imitate 
humor without possessing it, — which I 'm not sure tiuit 
I do. Between " Old Ironsides " and the " Oue-Hoss 
Shay," Holmes has played in a great many keys, and I 
w-as forced to echo that one which seemed easiest to 
follow. {Reads) 

THE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL MUSE. 

iMnsc, descend, or, stay ! — evolve thy presence from within, 
For all conditions now combine, and so I must hegin : 
The wind is fresh from wcst-nor'wcst, the sky is deepest blue, 
Thermometer at seventy, and pulse at seventy-two. 

At breakfast fish-balls I consumed; the pliosphatcs arc sup- 
plied ! 
The peccant acid iu my blood by Selters alkalied ; 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 83 

As far as I can see the works, my old machine of thought 
Euns with its cogs and pivots oiled, as if in Waltham bought. 

The main-spring is elastic yet, the balance-wheel is trim, 
And if " full -jewelled " one should think, let no man scoff at him ! 
Odi j)rofanum vulgiis, — well ! the truth is t' other way ; 
But one eupeptic as myself can always have his say. 

Suppose I let the wheels run on, till fancy's index-hand 
Points to a verse-inspiring theme and there inclines to stand ? 
Between the thought and rhythmic speech there often yawns a 

chasm ; 
To bridge it o'er we only need a vigorous protoplasm. 

"With an unconscious sinciput, a cerebellum free, 

I don't see why the loftiest lays should not be sung by me : 

The fitful flushes of the Muse my diagnosis own : 

I test her symptoms in the air as surely as ozone. 

There 's just one thing that fails me yet ; the fancies dart around 
Like skittish swallows on the wing, but none will touch the 

ground. 
With such conditions 't were a sin to lay the pen aside. 
But, with the mind close-girt to run, direction is denied. 

I 've waited, now, an hour or more : I 'd take a glass of wine. 
Save that I fear 't would send the pulse to seventy-eight or nine ; 
'T is that capricious jade, the Muse ! — I know her tricks of 

old: 
Just when my house is warm for her, she will prefer the cold ! 

The Gannet. Ab, you 've only caught some general 
characteristics, not the glitter and flash of Hohnes's 
lines ! His humor is like a Toledo blade ; it may be 
sheathed in a circular scabbard^ but it always springs out 



84 DIVEr.SIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

straight and keen, and fit for a direct lunge. He is tlie 
only poet in llie country avIio can write good " occa- 
sionals," without losing faith in the liner inspiration, or 
ceasing to obey it. 

Galahad. You very well know we have no time for 
selection. I have been reading lately his "Mechanism 
in Thought and Morals," so that my imitation was really 
suggested by his prose. 

The Ancient. That is permitted. For my part, 
though I like Holmes's songs in all keys, I liave always 
wished that he had written more such poems as "La 
Grisette," wherein we have, first of all, ease and grace, 
then just enough of sentiment, of humor, and of a light, 
sportive fancy to make a mixture mIioIIv delightful, — a 
beverage that cheers, but not inebriates, in which there is 
neither headache nor morbid tears. Hood had the same 
quality, though he does n't often reveal it ; so had Praed ; 
so, I feel sure, had Willis, but in his case it was a neg- 
lected talent. Wlien I say tiiat we most sorely need this 
naive, playful element in our literature, you may not 
agree with me ; but, 0, how tired I am of hearing tliat 
every poem should "convey a lesson," should "inculcate 
a truth," should " appeal to the moral sense." IVhy, 
half our self-elected critics seem to be blind to the purely 
aesthetic character of our art ! No man — not even the 
greatest — can breathe a particular atmosphere all his 
life, without taking some of its ingredients into his 
blood ; and just those which seem best may be most fatal 
to the imaginative faculty. I suspect there lias been 
more of battle in the intellectual Hfe of Holmes than any 
of us knows. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 85 

ZoiLUS. Now let us hear the Gannet. 

The Gannet. If it had been a leader for the " Home 
Journal/' I should have found the task light enough ; but 
Willis's poetic style is — as he would have said — rather 
un-come-at-able. {Reads.) 



KEREN-HAPPUCH. 

The comforters of Job had come and gone. 
They were anhungered ; for the eventide 
Sank over Babylon, and smokes arose 
From pottage cooked in palace and in tent. 
Then Keren -happuch, from her lordly bower 
Of gem-like jasper, and the porphyry floors 
Swept by the satins of her trailing robe, 
Came forth, and sat beside her father Job, 
And gave him comfort, mid his painful boils, 
And scraped him with a potsherd ; and her soul 
Rebelled at his unlovely misery. 
And from her lips, that parted like a cleft 
Of ripe pomegranates o'er their ruby teeth. 
Broke forth a wail : 

" Alas for thee, my sire ! 
And for the men and maidens of thy train, 
And for thy countless camels on the plain. 

More than thou didst require ; 
Thou mightst have sold them at the morning dawn 
For heavy gold : at even they were gone ! 

" And they who dressed my hair 
With agate braids and pearls from Samarcand 



86 DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Have died ; there is no handmaid in the land, 

To make my visage fair : 
TJnpainted and unpowdei-ed, lo ! I come. 
Gray with the ashes of my gorgeous home ! 

" Yea, thou and I are lone : 
The prince who wooed me fled in haste awny 
From thine infection : hungered here I stray, 

And find not any bone ; 
For famished cats have ravaged shelf and plate : 
The larder, like my heart, is desolate ! 

" And it is very drear. 
My sire, whose Avealth and beauty were my pride, 
To see thee so disfigured at my side, 

Nor leech nor poultice near. 
To save thy regal skin from later scars : 
Yea, thou art loathsome by the light of stars ! 

" Go, hie thee to thy room. 
And I Avill gather marjoram and nard. 
And mix their fragrance with the cooling lard, 

And thus avert thy doom. 
A daughter's sacrifice no tongue can tell : 
The prince will not return till thou art well ! " 

Galahad. Now I must say, althougli I have eiijoN'ed 
the travesty witli you, that this gives me a pang, I can't 
forget Willis's sunny, kindly, and sympathetic nature, 
and the dreary clouding of his mind at the last. There 
was something very tragic in the way in wliicli he clung 
to the fragments that remained, as one faculty after 
another failed him, and strove to be still the cheerful, 
si)arkling author of old. I was hardly more than a boy 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 87 

"wlieii I first went to him, a few years ago, and no brother 
could have been kinder to me. 

The Ancient. There never was a poet more free 
from jealousy or petty rivalry, none more ready to help 
or encourage. As an author, he was damaged by too 
early popularity, and he made the mistake of trying to 
retain it through exaggerating the features of his style 
which made him popular ; but neither homage nor defa- 
mation — and he received both in full measure — ever 
affected the man's heart in his breast. There was often 
an affectation of aristocratic elegance in his writings ; yet, 
in his life, he was as natural a democrat as Walt Whitman, 
gentle, considerate, and familiar with the lowest whom he 
met, and only haughty towards ignorant or vulgar preten- 
sion. Poe said that he narrowly missed placing himself 
at the head of American literature, which was true of his 
career from 1830 to about 1845. By the by, I wish some 
one would undertake to write our literary history, begin- 
ning, say, about 1800. 

ZoiLUS. Set about it yourself ! But, come, we are 
not to be cheated out of your contribution to-night; 
where is your Tennyson ? 

The Ancient. I have added another to his brief 
modern idyls. {Reads.) 

EUSTACE GREEN; 

Or, The Medicine-Bottle. 

Here 's the right place for lunch ; and if, ah me ! 
The hollies prick, and burr-weed grows too near. 
We '11 air our eyesight o'er the swelling downs. 



88 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

And so not mind them. "While the ]Medoc chills 
In ice, and yon champagne-flask in the sun 
Takes mellower warmth, I '11 tell you what I did 
To Eustace Green — last Camhridge-term it was, 
Just when the snowhall by the farmer's gate 
Made jokes of winter at the garden rose. 

No marvel of much wisdom Eustace was, — 

You know him, Hal, — no high-hrowed intellect, 

Such as with easy grab the wrangler's place 

Plucks fro}u the clutching hands of college youth. 

But home-bred, as it Avere ; and all the stock. 

His stalwart dad, and mother Marigold 

(We called her), Kate, Cornelia, Joseph, Jane, 

A country posy of great boys and girls. 

But she, the mother, when the brown ash took 

A livelier green beside the meadow-stile. 

And celandines, the milky kine of flowers. 

Were yellow in the lanes, hung o'er the fire 

A caldron huge — oh me, it was a sight 

To see her stir the many herbs therein ! 

Of yarrow, tansy, thyme, and camomile — 

What know I all ? — she boiled and slowly brewed 

The strange concoction : 't was an heirloom old. 

The recipe, a sovran cure, and famed 

From Hants to Yorkshire : this must Eustace take. 

Not that the lubber lad was ill — 0, no ! 

You did but need to punch him in the ribs, 

To feel how muscle overlaid the bone ; 

And as for trencher-practice, — trust me, Hal, 

A donkey -load of lunch were none too much. 

Were he here with us. Where was I ? — Ah, yes, 

The medicine ! She gave it me with words 



DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 89 

Many, and thrice repeated ; lie should take, 
Eustace, the dose at morn, and noon, and night, 
For these were feverous times : she did not know. 
Not she, what airs blew o'er the meads of Cam : 
Preventive ounces weighed a pound of cure. 
At last, I thrust the bottle in my sack. 
And left her. 

Now, returning Cambridge-wards, 
Some devil tickled me to turn the thing 
To joke, or was it humors in the blood. 
Stirring, perchance, when, oysters out of date 
And game prohibited, the stomach pines ? 
Think as you will ; but to myself my mind 
Thus reasoned : need to him of medicine 
Is none : the green cicala in the grass 
Chirps not more wholesome : wherefore swiftly I 
Will cats this useless brewage to the Avinds, 
Yea, to the thistled downs ; and substitute — 
Haply some ancient hostel glimmering near — 
Laborious Boreal brandy, equal bulk. 
And this, the thing accomplished, then did I 
Proffer to Eustace Green, all eager he 
For news of home and mother Marigold, 
His dad and Kate, Cornelia, Joseph, Jane, 
And Bloss, the ox, and Bounce, the plough-horse old, 
One-eyed, and spavined. But the medicine 
He took with : " Pshaw ! that beastly stuff again ? 
Am I a rat that she should send the dose ? " 
Then I : " Dear Eustace, times are feverous : 
Malarial breezes blow across the Cam : 
Preventive ounces weigh a pound of cure." 
" O, damn your ounces ! " he profanely cried ; 
" But if I must, I must ; so summon Giles, 



90 DITEPtSIOXS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

The undertaker, wlien I take this close. 

And gently coffin me when now I die." 

So drank ; and then, with great eyes all astare, 

Cried : " Taste it, you ! Fourth-proof, 0. P. and S. T. X. ! — 

"We '11 have a punch ! " And that teetotal dame. 

His mother, did we pledge in steaming punch. 

She knowing not ; and tears of laughter ran 

Down both our cheeks, and trickled in the bowl, 

"Weakening the punch. 

But now the INIedoc 's chill. 
And warm the sweet champagne ; so, while the copse 
Clangs round us like the clang of many shields, 
Down the long hollows to the dusky sea. 
Let us, with sandwich and the hard-boiled egg. 
Enjoy both nature's beauty and our own ! 

OiiNES, Well done ! 

ZoiiLUS. Why, you liave caught the very trick of 
Tennyson's blank-verse ! If you Lad only warmed the 
Medoc and chilled the champagne, I sliould hardly kuow 
the difference. But how did you ever happen to invent 
a motive, or plot, all complete, on the spur of the mo- 
ment ? 

The ANCIE^-T. Ah, you force me to confess : I did n't 
invent it. It was a trick I played myself, on a friend, in 
our young days ; and, by good luck, it came to my mem- 
ory just at the right time. Therefore, liaving the subject, 
the imitation of Tennyson's manner was easy enough. 
I 'm ghid, however, that you tliink it successful ; for it 
justifies me in holding fast to the principle we accepted, 
and w Inch I was obliged to enforce to-night. You know 
that my own scattering poems are quite unlike — how- 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 91 

ever long the interval between — anything of Tennyson's ; 
but I have made it a point, for years past, to study the 
individual characteristics of the poets, and this proves 
how easily those which are superficial and obvious may 
be copied. 

ZoiLUS. May I ask what your private estimate of 
Tennyson, as a poet, is ? 

The Ancient. Of course ! While I might, possibly, 
agree with his keenest critics in regard to many details 
of style or expression, especially in his earlier poems, I 
yield to no one in the profoundest respect for his noble 
loyalty to his art. Tennyson is a poet, who, recognizing 
the exact quality of his gift, lias given all the forces of his 
mind, all the energies of his life, to perfect it. I can see 
that he has allowed no form of knowledge, v\?hich this age 
has developed, to arise without assimilating, at ],east, its 
substance ; but all is employed in the sole service of his 
poetic art. He began with somethhig of the rank, " lush " 
luxuriance of style which Keats was just leaving behind 
him when he died : he now rises, often to a majestic sim- 
plicity and dignity which nearly remind me of Milton. 
Not that the two are similar, in any particular ; but Ten- 
nyson, like scarcely any other except Schiller, has achieved 
high success as a poet by comprehending clearly both 
his powers and their limitations. How easily, by mis- 
taking his true Avork, he might have scattered his _ rays, 
instead of gathering them into a clear focus of light ! 
All honor to him, I say, in this age, wlieu so many writ- 
ers degrade their gift by making it subservient to worldly 
ends ! 

Galahad {with enthusiasm). You make me happy ! 



92 



DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 



The Gannet. I sliould say, nevertheless, that he was 
well paid in ringing guineas. Eor instance — 

ZoiLUS. " The continuation in next week's New York 
Ledger ! " Do you know that it is one o'clock ? 

Omnes (starting up). We go — but we return ! 

[Exeunt. 




NIGHT THE FIFTH. 




]LL were on hand at the usual hour, fresh and 
eager for a contmuation of the performances. 
The Gannet, addressing Zoiliis, opened the 
conversation : — 

"I can guess one thing you have been thinking of 
since we met, — of Tennyson's place in literature ? " 

ZoiLUS. You have just hit it ! I did n't fully agree 
with the Ancient, but there was no time left for discus- 
sion. There must be some good reason ' for Tennyson's 
influence on the poetry of our day ; yet, if his is a gen- 
uine flower, it could n't be made a weed by being sown 
everywhere. There is no doubt of the individuality of 
his manner,' but I am not yet ready to say that it is pure, 
as Collins's, or Gray's, for instance, or even Words- 
worth's. He is sometimes like a perfume which cloys 
the sense from over-richness. Now, a very slight change 
in the odor of the tuberose might make it unpleasant ; 
and it seems to me that some of Tennyson's younger fol- 
lowers have made just such a change. 

Galahad. Almost the same thought occurred to me 
the other day. I was trying to recall some lines of the 
Ancient's imitation, and then went over in my mind the 



94 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

numbers of blank -verse idyls more or less in Tennyson's 
manner, -whicli Lave been written by others. He drew 
from a very far source, as I tliink Stedman has clearly 
sliown in his paper on "Theocritus and Tennyson" ; but 
they, drawing from him, cannot conceal theirs. I never 
before felt so keenly the difference between the poetry 
which rises out of a man's own nature and that whicli is 
impressed upon it, or communicated, like an infection, by 
another mind. I even went so far as to try my hand 
alone, on an imitation of this idyllic school, which I now 
see is itself an echo. 

The Ancient. Read it to us, then ! Who was your 
immediate model ? 

Galahad {t.aUng a -paper from his pocket). Why, no 
one in particular. Now, that I look over the lines, I see 
tliat I must have been thinking of the echoes of the 
" Princess," rather than of those of the short idyls of 
modern life. It is tlie craziest burlesque of the mediaeval 
themes, revived in that form : it is absurd, and nothing 
else. 

ZoiLUS. That will do very well, for variety. 

Galahad. Then, as Eustace Green says, if I must, I 
must. {Reads) 

SIR EGGXOGG. 

Forth from the purple battlements he fared, 
Sir Eggnogg of the Rampant Lily, named 
Prom lliat embrasure of his argent shield 
Given by a thousand leagues of heraldry 
On snuffy parchments di-awn, — so forth he fared. 
By bosky boles and autuam leaves he fared. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 95 

Where grew the juniper with berries black, 

The sphery mansions of the future gin. 

But naught of this decoyed his mind, so bent 

On fair Miasma, Saxon-blooded girl. 

Who laughed his loving lullabies to scorn. 

And would have snatched his hero-sword to deck 

Her haughty brow, or warm her hands withal. 

So scornful she : and thence Sir Eggnogg cursed 

Between his teeth, and chewed his iron boots 

In spleen of love. But ere the morn was high 

In the robustious heaven, the postern-tower 

Clang to the harsh, discordant, slivering scream 

Of the tire-woman, at the window bent 

To dress her crisped hair. She saw, ah woe ! 

The fair Miasma, overbalanced, hui'led 

O'er the flamboyant parapet which ridged 

The muffled coping of the castle's peak. 

Prone on the ivory pavement of the com't. 

Which caught and cleft her fairest skull, and sent 

Her rosy brains to fleck the Orient floor. 

This saw Sir Eggnogg, in his stirrups poised. 

Saw he and cursed, with many a deep-mouthed oath. 

And, finding nothing more could reunite 

The splintered form of fair IVIiasma, rode 

On his careering palfrey to the wars, 

And there found death, another death than hers. 

ZoiLUS. After this, write another such idyl yourself, 
if you dare ! 

Galahad. I never shall ; but when you have done 
the thing ignorantly, and a magazine wants it on account 
of the temjDorary popularity of the theme and manner, is 
an author much to blame for publishing ? 



96 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

The Gais^istet. Let your conscience rest, Galahad ! 
"Hunger and request of friends" were always valid 
pleas. If a poet invariably asked himself, " Is this origi- 
nal ? Is it something tliat must be written ? Is it likely 
to be immortal ? " I suspect our stock of verse would 
soon be very short. At least, only the Chiverses and 
Tuppers and would still be fruitful. 

The Ancie:n^t. Did you ever guess at the probable 
permanence of the things which seem best when they 
appear ? It is a wholesome experiment. Macaulay first 
suggested it to me, in speaking of tlie three per cent of 
Southey which might survive : since then, I have found 
that the Middle Ages are an innnense graveyard of 
poems, but nothing to what this century will be. I doubt 
Avhether many authors would write, in the mere hope of 
posthumous fame. 

The Gannet. I would n't ! My idea of literature is, 
the possession of a power which you can wield to some 
purpose while you live. It may also be wealth, another 
l)ower; it may be yoked with poHtics, which is better 
still ; it may — 

Galahad {interrupting). Stop ! don't make me feel 
that your gift, which I have believed in, is so entirely 
selfish ! 

ZoiLUS {shal-ing the hat). Here would soon be a 
precious row between you two ; draw your names and 
go to work ! 

The Gannet. What ? Henry T. Tuckerman ? 

ZoiLUS. To be sure ! I liave — Longfellow ! 

Galahad. Mine is William D. Howells. 

The Ancient. I have drawn llichard Henry Stod- 



DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 97 

dard. Now, no changing, remember ! We are better 
suited than the last time, unless it be Zoilus, of whom I 
have my doubts. All imitations cannot be equally for- 
tunate, and I 'm not sure that any of us would succeed 
better, if he sliould take his own time and pains for the 
task, instead of trusting to the first random suggestion. 

Zoilus. Then, why are you doubtful about me ? I 
have my random suggestion already. 

The Ancient. Work it out ! I think you under- 
stand my doubt, nevertheless. Tlie Gannet is cliuckling 
to himself, as if he were on the track of something 
wicked : I foresee that I must use my authority to-night, 
if I have any left. {Writes.) 

The Chorus {wlmpering together'). They are very 
evenly matched. Could any inference be drawn from the 
manner of eacli, as lie writes ? The Gannet has the most 
sarcastic air, Zoilus is evidently satisfied with his per- 
formance, Galahad seems earnest and a little perplexed, 
and the Ancient is cool and business-like. They have all 
learned sometiiing by practice; they work much more 
rapidly than at first. 

The Gannet {after all have finished) . When you try 
to grasp anything smooth, your hand slips. In Tucker- 
man there is only proper smoothness which can be trav- 
estied, and you know how difficult that is. {Reads.) 

ODE TO PROPRIETY. 

Thou calm, complacent goddess of the mind, 
Look on me from thine undisturbed domain ; 

Thy well-adjusted leaflets let me bind, 

As once on youthful, now on manly brain. 



98 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Upon thy head there is no hair awry ; 

Thy careful drapery falleth as it should : 
Thy face is grave ; thy scrutinizing eye 

Sees only that which hath been stamped as good. 

Thou art no patron of the strenuous thought 
That speaks at will, regardless of old rule ; 

To thee no neologic lays are brought. 
But models of the strictly classic school. 

Thou teachest me the proper way and sure ; 

To no imaginative heights misled. 
My verse moves onward with a step secure. 

Nor hastes with raptm-e, nor delays with dread. 

I do not need to woo the fickle IMuse, 
But am her master, justified by thee : 

All measures must obey me as I choose, 
So long as they are thine. Propriety ! 

For genius is a fever of the blood, 

And lyric rage a strange, disturbing spell : 

Let fools attempt the torrent and the flood. 
Beside the pensive, placid pond I dwell ! 

ZoiLUS. You have too much alliteratiou iu the last 
line : that is not at all proper. 

The Ganxet. Then it shows the impossibility of re- 
producing the tone of Pope and Gray in our day. I do 
not know that Tuckerman attempts this in his verse ; but 
I suspect that his prose model is still Addison. 

ZoiLUS. That is really getting to be a sign of origi- 
nality ! !Mix Addison and Imagination together, and 
sublimate in a French retort, and where could you have 



DIVEUSIONS OP THE ECHO CLUB. 99 

a finer modern style ? Tuckerman lias all tradition on 
his side ; he represents a conservative element in litera- 
ture, which — though I don't admire it much — I think 
necessary, to keep the wild modern schools in order. 

Galahad. It is something new, to hear you take this 
side. 

Zo'iLUS. You must not always credit me with being 
wholly in earnest. I think I am a natural iconoclast ; 
but one might as well assail respectability in society as 
the " classic " spirit in literature. It is impervious to all 
our shots ; every blow slides off its cold polish. But, 
candidly, there are times when it seems to refresh me, or, 
at least, to give me a new relish for something warmer 
and more pungent. 

The Ancient. I believe you, fully. We should all 
fare badly, were it not for the colder works which we 
hear so often depreciated. They make a fire-proof temple 
in which we may build fires at will. Now, let us hear 
how you have treated an author who is already a classic, 
though without the cold polish of which you speak. Very 
few poets have been complimented by so many ordinary 
parodies, 

ZoiLUS. I am aware of that, and I have tried to get 
as far away as possible from the risk of resembling them. 
{lieads^ 

NAUVOO. 

This is the place : be still for a while, my high-pressure steam- 
boat ! 
Let me survey the spot where the Mormons builded their temple. 
Much have I mused on the wreck and ruin of ancient religions. 



100 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Scandinavian, Greek, Assyrian, Zend, and the Sanskrit, 
Yea, and explored the mysteries hidden in Talmudic targums. 
Caught the gleam of Chrysaor's sword and occulted Orion, 
Backward spelled the lines of the Hebrew graveyard at Newport, 
Studied Ojibwa symbols and those of the Quarry of Pipe-stone, 
Also the myths of the Zulus whose questions converted Colenso, 
So, methiuks, it were well I should muse a little at Nauvoo. 

Fair was he not, the primitive Prophet, nor he who succeeded. 
Hardly for poetry tit, though using the Urim and Thummim. s 
Had he but borrowed Levitical trappings, the girdle and ephod, 
Fine-twined linen, and ouches of gold, and bells and pomegran- 
ates. 
That, indeed, might have kiudled the weird necromancy of fancy. 
Had he but set up mystical forms, like Astarte or Peor, 
Balder, or Freya, Quetzalcoatl, Perun, jNIanabozho, 
Verily, though to the sense theologic it might be offensive, 
Great were the gain to the pictured, flashing speech of the poet. 
Yet the Muse that delights in Mesopotamian numbers, 
Vague and vast as the roar of the wind in a forest of pine-trees, 
Now must tune her strings to the names of Joseph and Erigham. 
Hebrew, the first ; and a Smith before the Deluge was Tubal, 
Thor of the East, who first made iron ring to the hammer ; 
So on the iron heads of the people about him, the latter, 
Striking the sparks of belief and forging their faith in the Good 

Time 
Coming, the Latter Day, as he called it, — the Kingdom of Zion. 
Then, in the words of Philip the Eunuch unto Bclshazzar, 
C:inic to him multitudes wan, diseased and decrepit of spirit, 
Came and heard and believed, and buildcd the temple at Nauvoo. 

All is past ; for Joseph was smitten with lead from a pistol, 
Brigham went with the others over the prairies to Salt Lake. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 101 

Answers now to the long, disconsolate wail of tlie steamer. 
Hoarse, inarticulate, shrill, the rolling and bounding of ten- 
pins, — • 
Answers the voice of the bar-tender, mixing the smash and the 

julep. 
Answers, precocious, the boy, and bites a chew of tobacco. 
Lone as the towers of Afrasiab now is the seat of the Prophet, 
Mournful, inspiring to verse, though seeming utterly vulgar : 
Also — for each thing now is expected to furnish a moral — 
Teaching innumerable lessons for whoso believes and is patient. 
Thou, that readest, be resolute, learn to be strong and to suffer ! 
Let the dead Past bury its dead and act in the Present ! 
Bear a banner of strange devices, " Forever " and " Never " ! 
Build in the walls of time the fane of a permanent Nauvoo, 
So that thy brethren may see it and say, " Go thou and do like- 
wise ! " 

Galahad. Zoilus, you are incorrigible. 

ZoiLUS {laughing). Just what I expected you to say; 
But it 's no easy thing to be funny in hexameters : the 
Sappliic verse is much more practicable. I heaped to- 
gether everything I could remember, to increase my 
chances. In some of Longfellow's earlier poems the 
theme and moral are like two sides of a medal ; but I 
could n't well copy that peculiarity. 

The Gannet. You will only find it in "The Beleag- 
uered City " and " Seaweed." Longfellow is too genuine 
an artist to fall into that or any other "peculiarity." 
Just his best, his most purely imaginative poems are those 
which have not been popular, because the reader must be 
half a poet to appreciate them. What do you consider 
his best work ? 



103 DIVERSIOXS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

ZoiLUS. " Evangeline," of course. 

The Gan>'ET. No, it is the "Golden Legend"! 
That is the spirit of the Middle Ages, and the feeling of 
all ages, set to modern melodies. I think I could "write 
an imitation of Longfellow's higher strains — not of those 
which are so well known and so much quoted — which 
would be fairer than yours. 

ZoiLUS. Do it, and good luck to you. (The Gaxnet 
writes?) 

The Ancient. Not one of our poets has deserved 
better of his countrymen than Longfellow : he lias ad- 
vanced tlie front rank of our culture. His popularity 
has naturally brought envy and disparagement upon him ; 
but it has carried far and wide among the people tlie in- 
fluence of his purity, his refinement, and his constant ref- 
erence to an ideal of life which so many might otherwise 
forget. As a nation, we are still full of crudity and eon- 
fusion, and his influence, so sweet and clear and steady, 
has been, and is, more than a merely poetic leaven. 

Galahad. I have felt that, without ever thinking of 
putting it into words. The sweetness of Longfellow's 
verse is its most neceascm/ quality, when we consider his 
literary career in tliis light ; but I never could see how 
exquisite finish implies any lack of power. What was 
that line of Goethe which you quoted to me once, Ancient? 

The Ancient. Nur ans vollendeter Kraft lAiclet die 
An ninth hcrvor, — only ]icrfccted Strength dischiscs Grace. 
Tlicre arc singular ideas in regard to "power" afloat in 
literary circles. Why, the sunbeam is more powerful 
than a thousand earthquakes ! I judge the power of an 
author by the influence of his works. 



DIVEllSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 103 

ZoiLUS. Well, for my part, I don't appreciate " pow- 
er," unless it strikes me square between the eyes. What 
1 understand by "power" is something regardless of ele- 
gance, of the conventional ideas of refinement, of what 
you call " laws of ai-t," — something primitive, lawless, 
forcing you, with a strong hand, to recognize its existence. 

The Ancient. Give me a few instances ! 

ZoiLUS [cifter a pause) . Carlyle, — Poe, — Swinburne, 
— Emily Bronte's " Wuthering Heights " ! 

Galahad. Why not Artemus Ward and Joaquin 
Miller? 

The Gannet. There ! I never quite succeed when 
I assume a certain ability. I had in my mhid, Zoilus, the 
" Prometheus and Epimetheus," the " Palingenesis," and 
other poems in the same key ; but it was so difficult to 
imitate them that I came down one grade and struck into 
a style more easy to be recognized. It may not be better 
than yours, but it is not so horribly coarse. {Reads.) 

THE SEWING-MACHINE. 

A strange vibration from the cottage window 

My vagrant steps delayed, 
And half abstracted, Hke an ancient Hindoo, 

I pansed beneath the shade. 

What is, I said, this nnremitted hnniming, 

Louder than bees in spring ? 
As unto prayer the murmurous answer coming, 

Shed from Sandalphon's wing. 

Is this the sound of unimpeded labor. 
That now usurpeth play ? 



104 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Our harsher substitute for pipe and tabor, 
Ghitteni and virelay ? 

Or, is it yearning for a higher vision, 
By spiritual hearing heard ? 

Nearer I drew, to listen with preeision. 
Deciphering not a word. 

Then, peering through the pane, as men of sin do, 

Myself the while unseen, 
1 marked a maiden seated by the window. 

Sewing with a machine. 

Her gentle foot propelled the tireless treadle. 

Her gentle baud the seam : 
My fancy said, it were a bliss to peddle 

Those shirts, as in a dream ! 

Iler lovely fingers lent to yoke and collar 

Some imperceptible taste ; 
The rural swain, who buys it for a dollar, 

By beauty is embraced. 

O fairer aspect of the common mission ! 

Only the Poet sees 
The true siguilicance, the high position 

Of such snudl things as these. 

Not now doth Toil, a brutal Boanerges, 

Deform the maiden's hand ; 
Her implement its soft sonata merges 

In sonu;s of sea and land. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 105 

And thus the hum of the unspooling cotton. 

Blent with her rhythmic tread, 
Shall still he heard, when virelays are forgotten, 

And troubadours are dead. 

ZoiLUS. Ah, you could n't avoid the moral applica- 
tion ! 

The Ancient. Neither can you, in imitating Bryant 
and Whittier. In Longfellow — excepting some half- 
dozen of his earlier poems — the moral element is so skil- 
fully interfused with the imaginative, that one hardly 
suspects its presence. I should say, rather, tliat it is 
an inherent quality of liis genius, and, therefore, can 
never offend like an assumed purpose. I abominate as 
much as you, Zo'ilus, possibly can, the deliberate inten- 
tion to preach moral doctrines in poetry. T/iai is turning 
the glorious guild of authors into a higher kind of Tract 
Society ! But the purer the poetic art, the nearer it 
approaches the loftiest morality; this is a truth which 
Longfellow illustrates. I have always defended the New 
England spirit against your prejudices, but this I must 
admit, that there is a large class of second-rate writers 
there who insist tliat every wayward little brook, whose 
murmur and sparkle are reason enough for its existence, 
must be made to turn some utilitarian mill. Over and 
over again, I have seen how their literary estimate of our 
poets is gauged by the assumed relation of the latter to 
some variety of " Reform." Tlie Abolition of Slavery, 
first, then Temperance, and now Woman Suffrage, or 
Spiritualism, or the Labor Question, are dragged by the 
head and heels into the temple, and sometimes laid upon 
the very altar, of Letters. The wonder is, that this 



106 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

practice doesn't retrospectively affect tlieir judgment, 
and send Dante and Shakespeare and Milton to their 
cliaotic limbo ! 

Zo'iLrs. Thanks for that much support ; but let us 
hear Galahad ! 

Galauad. Howells, at least, has escaped some of the 
troubles through which the older authors have been 
obliged to pass. His four years in Venice made a for- 
tunate separation between his youthful period and his 
true sphere of activity. He did not change front, as the 
rest of us must do, hi the press of battle. I was very 
much puzzled what to select, as specially distinctive, and 
allowed myself, at last, to be guided by two or three 
short poems. {Reads) 

PREVARICATION. 

The Ancient. I think I know what you had iu your 
mind. But I was expecting to hear something in hex- 
ameters : you know his — .... * 

ZoiLUs. Yes, but .... 

Galahad. It is true to some extent. Still, on the 
other hand, he ... . 

* Mr. Howclls, as Editor of the "Atlantic Monthly," in- 
sisted that he conld not properly allow his name to appear among 
the poets. 1 did not agree with him ; but T tiiially compromised 
our ditference hy omitting the travesty and the opinions, and 
adding foot-notes apparently written hy himself. The latter 
were accepted as genuine and conmiented upon, to our mutual 
amusement. The imitation has heen lust, or ] should restore 
it now. — B. T. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 107 

ZoiLUS. Well, after all, we seem to agree tolerably 
well. All our younger poets are tending towards greater 
finish and elegance. It is about time to expect the ap- 
})earance of a third generation, with all the beauties and 
faults of their new youth about them. Why, we have 
hardly any known writer much less than thirty-five years 
old ! Our liglits scarcely begin to burn until the age 
when Keats's, Shelley's, Byron's, and Burns's went out. 
Is there something in our atmosphere that hinders devel- 
opment ? I always supposed it possessed a greater 
stimulus. 

The Ancient. If you look back a little, you will find 
that Bryant, Willis, Longfellow, and Lowell were known 
and popular authors at twenty-five. But I have noticed 
the lack of a younger generation of poets. It is equally 
true of England, France, and Germany ; none of those 
who have made a strong impression, whether good or 
bad, can be called young, with the single exception of 
Swinburne. Bossetti, though he has appeared so re- 
cently, must be forty-five years old ; and in Germany the 
most popular poets — Geibel, Bodenstedt, Hamerling, and 
lledwitz — are all in middle age. I think a careful study 
of the literary history of the last hundred years would 
sliow that we have had both the heroes and the epigonoi ; 
and now nature requires a little rest. Of course, all 
theories on the subject must be merely fanciful ; half a 
dozen young fellows of the highest promise may turn up 
in a month ; but I rather expect to see a good many 
fallow years. 

Galahad. Then I, at least, have fallen on evil times. 
If I live after our stars have set, and no \\q\\ ones have 
arisen, it will be — 



108 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

ZoiLUS. Your great luck ! Farmi les aveiigles, you 
know ; but we are forgetting the Aucieut's imitation. 

The Ancient. Stoddard's last volume shows both 
variety and inequality, but the most of it has the true 
ring. I was delighted with his gift of poetic narration, 
in "The Wine-Cup " and " The King's Sentinel " ; yet, 
even in them, there in an undertone of sadness. One can 
only make a recognizable echo of his verse, in the minor 
key. {Reads.) 

THE CANTELOPE. 

Side by side in the crowded street, 

Amid its ebb and flow, 
"We walked together one autumn morn ; 

('T was many years ago !) 

The markets blushed with fruits and flowers ; 

(Both jNIemory and Hope !) 
You stoi)ped and bought me at the stall 

A spicy cantelope. 

We drained together its honeyed wine, 

"We cast the seeds away ; 
I slipped and fell on the moony rinds, 

And you took me home on a dray ! 

The honeyed wine of your love is drained ; 

I limp from the fall I had ; 
The snow-flakes muflle the empty stall, 

And everything is sad. 

The sky is an inkstand, upside down, 
It sj)lashcs the world with gloom ; 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 109 

The earth is full of skeleton bones. 
And the sea is a wobbling tomb ! 

ZoiLUS. I might have written that; what do you 
say, Galahad ? 

Galahad. It is fully as rollicking as yours, but not 
quite so coarse. I always find in Stoddard a most true 
and delicate ear for the melody of verse, and I thorouglily 
enjoy his brief snatches, or " catches," of song. When I 
disagree with him, it is usually on account of the theme 
rather than the execution. His collection of " Melodies 
and Madrigals " gave me the key to his own taste and 
talent ; he seems to have wandered down to us from the 
times of Charles I. What has the Gannet been writing 
all this while ? 

The Gannet. Something not on our programme. 
After trying my hand on Tuckerman and then on Long- 
fellow, I felt fresh for one task more ; and we have had 
so few ladies introduced into our diversions, that I turned 
to Mrs. Stoddard for a new inspiration. You know how 
I like her poems, as the efforts of a not purely rhythmic 
mind to express itself rhythmically. They interest me 
greatly, as everj»embodiment of struggle does. A com- 
monplace, conventional intellect would never dare to do 
the things sbe does, both in prose and verse ; she defies 
the usual ways to popularity with a most indomitable 
perseverance. 

Galahad. Is not tbat tlie way to reach it in the 
end? 

The Gannet. No man knoweth ; because no one can 
foresee how the tastes or whims of the mercurial public 
may turn. Some authors predict their own popularity ; 



110 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

some secretly expect it, and never get it ; and some, 
again, leave works which may seem dead and buried, but 
are dug up as if by accident, after two or three centuries, 
and become new and delightful to a different race of men. 
Shall I read you my imitation ? 

The Ancient. We wait. 

The Gannet. {Reads.) 



THE NETTLE. 

If days were nights, I could their weigbt endure. 

This darkness cannot hide from me the iihmt 

I seek : I know it by the rasping touch. 

The moon is wrapped in bombazine of cloud ; 

The capes project like crooked lobster-shears 

Into the bobbery of the waves ; the marsh. 

At ebb, has now a miserable smell. 

I will not be delayed nor hustled back. 

Though every Avind should muss my outspread hair. 

I snatch the plant that seems my coming fate : 

I pass the crinkled satin of the rose, 

The violets, frightened out of all their wits. 

And other flowers, to me so commonplace. 

And cursed with showy mediocrity. 

To cull the foliage which repels and stings. 

Weak hands may bleed ; but mine arc tough with pride. 

And I but smile where others sob and screech. 

The draggled flounces of the willows lash 

INIy neck ; I tread upon the bouncing rake, 

^Vliirli bangs me sorely, but I hasten on, 

AVith teeth lirm-sct as biting on a wire, 

And feet and Angers clinched in bitter pain. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. Ill 

This, f(!W would coniproluMid ; l)ul;, if llioy did, 
I should despise inyscU' and merit scorn. 
\Vc all iirc riddles whieh we eaiuiot guess ; 
Each has his gimcracks and his ihinguinbubs, 
And mine arc night and nettles, mud and mist, 
Since others hate them, cowardly avoid. 
Things arc mysterious when you make them so, 
And the slow-pacing days arc mighty ([ueer; 
]}ut Fate is at the bottom of it all, 
And something somehow turns up in the end. 

ZoiLUS. That is ixn cclio willi a vengeance ! But the 
exaggeration of ])eeiiliarities is the best part of our I'un ; 
there you had the advantage. And this proves what 1 
have said, tliat the " classie " style is nearly iniprcgiiablc. 
How could you exaggerate it ? You might as well un- 
dertake an architectural burlescpie of tlu5 rarthenon. It 
is the Gothic, J^yzantine, Moresque styles in literature 
which give the true material for travesty, just as they 
allow the greatest intellectual freedom. 

TiJE Ancient. We shall have to dub you " the Pugiii 
of Poetry.'* You 'vc been taking a hint from Ciough's 
Jioi/iie. 

The Gannet. Whieh Zoilus docs n't like, !)ecause of 
the hexameters, although there n(;vcr were lighter and 
less encumbered lines. With all Ciough's classicism, his 
is a thoroughly Saxon-Gothic mind. Where will you 
find a more remarkable combination of richness and sub- 
tlety, of seliolarly finish and the frankest realism? lie' 
is the only man who has ever made English phrase fiow 
naturally in elegiac cadence. You, certainly, must re- 
member, Ancient ? 



11: 



DITERSIOXS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 



" "\\'here, upon Apeimine slope, -vvitli the chestnut the oak-trees 
immingle, 
"V^'here amid odorous copse bridle-paths wander and wind, 
TN'here under mulberry branches the diligent rivulet sparkles, 
Or amid cotton and maize peasants their water-works ply, 
"Where, over fig-tree and orange in tier upon tier still re- 
peated. 
Garden on garden upreared, balconies step to the sky, — 
Ah, that I were, far away from the crowd and the streets 
of the city, 
I'nder the vine-trellis laid, my beloved, with thee ! " 

ZoiLUS. O, if you ouce begin to quote, I surrender. 
The A^fCiEXT. Let us all part on good terms ; tliat 
is, each holding to Lis own opinion. [Exeunt. 




NIGHT THE SIXTH. 




{Enter Zoilus, last, the others being already assemhled : he 
throvjs down a newspaper on the table.) 

OILUS. There ! Read that notice of mj last 
article in , and tell me whether such criti- 
cism is apt to encourage the development of an 
American literature ! 
The Gannet {taking the paper). I see where it is, 
by the dint of your thumb-nail ; there are only half a 
dozen lines, in what I should call the sneering-oracular 
style ; but, Zoilus, you have yourself done a great deal of 
this thing. Now the poisoned chalice is commended to 
your own lips. It is singular how little sympathy we 
have for others, in such cases. When I am abused, 
somebody always sends the paper to me with lines drawn 
around the article, so that I shall not miss it ; and all my 
friends are sure to ask, " Have you seen what So-and-so 
says ? " When I am praised, nobody sends the paper, 
and my friends take it for granted that I have read the 
article. I don't complain of them : they are naturally 
silent when they agree, and aroused when they disagree, 
with the criticism. 

The Ancient. This notice is not fair, of course ; 
but it is only a part of the prevalent fashion of criticism. 



114 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

One never can be sure, in such cases, whether the writer 
is really sincere in his judgment, or wliether he has seized 
an opportunity to make a little literary capital for himself 
at the expense of the author. But I firmly believe in the 
ultimate triumph oi good work over all these airs of supe- 
rior knowledge and patronage and contemptuous depre- 
ciation. A friend of mine once devoted a great deal of 
time to a very careful and thorough article upon a poet 
who wrote in a dialect with which not ten men in tliis 
country are familiar. He afterwards showed me the 
critical notices it drew forth, and those which treated the 
subject with the coolest possible air of knowledge were 
written by men who knew nothing whatever about it. 

Galahad. Then how is the ordinary reader ever to 
be enlightened ? 

The Ancient. Most readers, I imagine, simply like, 
or dislike, what they read. Authors greatly exaggerate 
the effect of inadequate criticism. Why, do you know 
that critical genius is much rarer than poetical ? You 
are not afraid of the crude poets, who publish in news- 
paper corners, pushing you from your stools of song : 
why should you be annoyed by the critics who stand 
upon the same intellectual plane ? Let me repeat to you 
what the greatest of critics, Lessing, said: ""What is 
tolerable in my labors is owing solely to the critical fac- 
ulty. I am, therefore, always ashamed or grieved when- 
ever 1 hear anything said to the disadvantage of that 
faculty. It is said to crush genius, and I flattered myself 
that I had received in it something akin to genius." 
After Lessing, wg can only accept Jeflrey with certain 
reservations, until wc come to Saintc-Bcuve. In this 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 115 

country, I call Lowell the first critic, tliougli Whipple 
and Riplej have high and honorable places. A true 
critic must not only be a universal scholar, but as clear- 
conscienced as a saint and as tenderly impressible as a 
woman. After that he may be rigid as Minos. 

ZoiLUS. But you will certainly agree with me, that 
a critical literature of the kind you describe — intelligent, 
appreciative, sympatlietic, and rigidly just — is much 
needed ? 

The Ancient. Never more than just now. 

ZoiLUS. What then, frankly, do you think of the tone 
of this paper, and the and the ? 

The Ancient {smiling). They remind me so much 
of a little satirical poem of Uhland, "The Spring-Song of 
the Critic," that I am comforted and amused, when I 
might otherwise be most annoyed. There never was a 
more admirable picture of that fine, insidious egotism of 
the spurious critic, which makes him fear to praise, lest 
admiration should imply inferiority. I can't remember 
the original lines, or I would translate it for you ; but I 
might try an American paraphrase. 

Omnes. By all means ! (The Ancient writes?) 

ZoiLUS. 1 feel as if I had had whiskey poured into an 
open wound. You made me smart savagely for a few 
minutes ; but I am already getting comfortable. 

The Gannet. There is no real comfort until you grow 
pachydermatous ; I don't envy Galahad the seasoning 
that awaits him. 

Galahad. I have part of my experience vicariously, 
in Zo'ilus. 

ZoiLUS. The devil you have ! wait, my boy, until you 



116 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

publish your next poem : I '11 return it to you, with in- 
terest ! 

The Ancient. Uliland makes the critic Avalk out in 
the spring-time, and patronize Nature in his usual tone, 
the very tone of which Zoilus complains. This is a rough 
imitation : — 

H'm ! Spi-ing ? 'T is popular, we 've heard, 

And must be noticed, therefore ; 
Not that a flower, a brook, or bird 

Is what we greatly care for. 

The trees are budding : immature ! 

Yet them, no doubt, admire some : 
One leaf comes like another, sure, 

And on the whole it 's tiresome. 

What kind of bird is this Ave hear ? 

The song is vague and mystic ; 
Some notes, we grant, are smooth and clear. 

But not at all artistic. 

We 're not quite sure we wholly like 
Those ferns that wave and spread so : 

'T is safe to doubt the things that strike 
The eye at once ; we 've said so. 

An odor ? H'm ! it might be worse ; 

There must be violets nigh us : 
Quite passable ! (For Shakespeare's verse. 

This time, will justify us.) 

A native plant ! We don't know what : 
Some, now, would call it pleasant, 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 117 

But, really, we would rather not 
Commit ourselves, at present. 

But further time we will not waste. 

Neglecting our position ; 
To scourge the stupid puhlic taste 

Is our peculiar mission. 

And if men saw us, and should deem 
(Those ignorant human brothers !) 

That we the Spriug enjoyed, we 'd seem 
No better than the others ! 

Omnes. Good ! It reads like an original. 

The Ancient. It is one, properly : I have not trans- 
lated any of Uhland's phrases. However, let us change 
the theme, for this is a dangerous hobby of mine, and we 
have other work before us. How many names are there 
still undrawn ? 

The Gannet {looUng in the hat). A dozen yet ! 

The Ancient {drawing). James Russell Lowell, — 
1 must gird up my loins. 

The Gannet. Bayard Taylor. 

ZoiLUS. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

Galahad. George H. Boker. 

The Gannet. The supply will be exhausted in two 
or three nights more, and then all our fun must come to 
an end. There will be nothing left for us, but to travesty 
each other. 

The Chorus. An excellent idea ! Four times four, 
each doing each other and himself also, will give us six- 
teen imitations. 



118 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

ZoiLUS. No doubt you Tvould enjoy it hugely. Turn 
to Lucretius for a picture of the dehght of sitting on the 
safe shore and looking at the waves in a storm ! 

The Chorus. " The swelling and falling of the waves 
is the life of the sea." 

ZoiLUS. Go to, with your quotations ! How easy it 
is to apply a high moral stimulus to somebody else's 
mind ! Every poet, in his secret soul, admits his exqui- 
site, quivering sensitiveness for the children of his brain. 
He may hide it from the sight of every one ; but it is 
there, or he would not be a poet ; and he is always most 
artlessly surprised at the betrayal of the same feeling iu 
another. /, of course, should coolly bear any amount of 
travesty ; but how would it be with the Ancient, the Gan- 
net, and Galahad ? 

The Gannet. Zoilus, you 're a humbug ! Take your 
pencil and begin your work : see how the Ancient is reel- 
ing off his lines ! 

{They write steadily for ffteen or twenty minutes; then all 
have finished except The Ancient.) 

The Ancient. Mine is no easy task, and I 'm afraid 
I have laid it out on too extensive a plan. 

Omnes. Go on : we will wait. 

The Ancient {ten mi?iutes later). You will sympa- 
thize with me, Galahad, for you know how much I like 
Lowell's poetry. 1 have followed him from the start, 
when he seemed like a vigorous young oak, and like an 
oak he has grown slowly, strongly, and with ever-broad- 
ening branches. But one can sport, as well as pray, 
under your large trees. {Reads.) 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 119 



THE SAGA OF AHAB DOOLITTLE. 

Who hath not thought himself a poet ? Who, 
Feeling the stuhbed pin-feathers pricking through 
His greenish gosling-down, but straight misdeems 
Himself anointed ? They must run their course. 
These later measles of the fledgling mind. 
Pitting the adolescent rose with brown, 
And after, leaving scars ; and we must bear, 
Who come of other stirp, no end of roil. 
Slacken our strings, disorient ourselves, 
And turn our ears to huge conchyliar valves 
To hear the shell-hum that would fain be sea. 

guarding thorn of Life's dehiscent bud, 
Exasperation ! Did we clip thee close. 
Disarm ourselves with non-resistant shears, 
And leave our minds demassachusetted. 

What fence 'gainst inroad of the spouAng throng? 
For Fame 's a bird that in her wayward sweep 
Gossips to all ; then, raven-like, comes home 
Hoarse-voiced as autumn, and, as autumn leaves 
Behind her, blown by all the postal winds. 
Letters and manuscripts from unknown hands. 
Thus came not Ahab's : his he brought himself, 
One morn, so clear with impecunious gold, 

1 said : " Chaucer yet lives, and Calderon ! " 
And, letting down the gangways of the mind 
For shipment from the piers of common life, 
O'er Learning's ballast meant some lighter freight 
To stow, for export to Macarian Isles. 

But it was not to be ; a tauroid knock 



120 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Shook the ash-panels of my door with pain. 

And to my vexed " Come in ! " Ahab appeared. 

Homespun, at least, — thereat I swiftly felt 

Somewhat of comfort, — tall, knock-kneed, and gaunt 

Face windy-red, hands horny, large and loose. 

That groped for mine, and finding, dropped at once 

As half ashamed ; and thereupon he grinned. 

I waited, silent, till the silence grew 

Oppressive ; but he bore it like a man ; 

Then, as my face still queried, opened wide 

The stiff portcullis of his rustic speech. 

Whence issued words : " You 'd hardly kalkelate 

That I 'ra a poet, but I kind o' guess 

I be one ; so the peojile say, to hum." 

Then from his cavernous armpit drew and gave 

The singing leaves, not such as erst I knew, 

But strange, disjointed, where the unmeasured feet 

Staggered allwhither in pursuit of rhyme. 

And could not find it : assonance instead, 

Cases and verbs misplaced — remediable those — 

Broad-shouldered coarseness, fondly meant for wit. 

I turned the leaves ; his small, gray, hungry eye 

Stuck like a burr ; agape with hope his mouth. 

"What could I say ? the woi-n conventional phrase 

We use on such occasions, — better wait, 

Verse must have time ; its seed, like timothy -grass, 

Sown in the fall to sprout the following spring, 

Is often winter-killed ; none can decide ; 

A single rain-drop prints the eocene, 

Wiiile crow-bars fail on lias : so with song : 

The Doom is born in each thing's primitive stuff. 

Perchance he understood not ; yet I thrust 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 121 

Some hypodermic hope within his flesh, 
Unconsciously ; erelong he came again. 
Would I but see his latest ? I did see ; 
"Shuddered, and answered him in sterner wise. 
I love to put the bars up, shutting out 
My pasture from the thistle-cropping beasts 
Or squealing hybrids, who have range enough 
Oil our New England commons, — whom the Fiend, 
Encouragement-of-Native-Talent, feeds 
"With windy provender, in Waverley, 
And Flag, and Ledger, weakly manger-racks. 

Months passed ; the catbird on the elm-tree sang 

What " Free from Ahab ! " seemed, and I believed. 

But, issuing forth one autumn morn, that shone 

As Earth were made October twenty -seventh 

(Some ancient Bible gives the date), he shot 

Across my path as sped from Ensign's bow, 

More grewsome, haggard-seeming than before. 

Ere from his sinister armpit his right hand 

Could pluck the sheets, I thundered forth, " Aroint ! " 

Not using the Anglo-Saxon shibboleth. 

But exorcismal terms, unusual, fierce. 

Such as would make a saint disintimate. 

The witless terror in his face nigh stayed 

My speech, but I was firm and passed him by. 

Ah, not three weeks were sped, ere he again 

Waylaid me in the meadows, with these words : 

" I saw thet suthin' riled you, the last time ; 

Be you in sperrits now ? " — and drew again — 

But why go on ? I met him yesterday. 

The nineteenth time, — pale, sad, but patient still. 



122 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

"When Hakon steered the dragons, there was place, 
Though but a thrall's, beside the eagle-helms, 
For him who rhymed instead of rougher work. 
For speech is thAvarted deed : the Berserk fire 
But smoulders now in strange attempts at verse, 
While hammering sword-blows mend the halting rhyme. 
Give mood and tense unto the well-thewed aim. 
And turn these ignorant Ahabs into bards ! 

ZoiLUS. Eaith ! I think each of us imitates most amus- 
ingly the very authors whom he most admires. I might 
have made something fiercer, but it would n't have been 
more characteristic. 

The Gannet. When you seem dissatisfied with 
Lowell's work, I can still see that you recognize liis 
genius. I agree with you that he sometimes mistakes 
roughness for strength, and is sometimes consciously 
careless ; but neither his faults nor his virtues are of the 
common order. I like him for the very quality out of 
which both grow, — his evident faith in the inspiration 
of the poet. In "The Cathedral" he says "second- 
thoughts are prose," which is always true of the prime 
conception ; but he seems often to apply it to the details 
of verse. His sympathy with the Norse and Nibe- 
lungen elements in literature, and with tlie old English 
ballads, is natural and very strong. Perhaps it is not 
always smoothly fused with the other spirit which is 
born of liis scholarship and taste and artistic feeling. I 
care less for tliat : to my mind, he is always grandly 
tonic and stimulating. 

The Ancient. I think the objection which Zoilus 
makes comes simply from the fact tliat many of Lowell's 



DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 123 

poems are overweighted with ideas. Instead of pouring 
a tliin, smooth stream, he tilts the bottle a little too 
much, and there is an impetuous, uneven crowding of 
thought. But I should rather say that he is like his 
own " Cathedral," large, Gothic, with many a flying 
buttress, pinnacles melting in the air, and now and then 
a grotesque gargoyle staring down upon you. There 
is a great range between Hosea Biglow and the Harvard 
Ode. 

ZoiLUS. I confess I don't like unmixed enthusiasm, 
and I 'm frequently provoked to spy out the weak points 
of any author who gets much of it. How I should feel 
if it were bestowed on me, I can't tell ; probably as com- 
placent as the rest of you. 

The Gannet. Zoilus, when you know that / 'm 
only considered "brilliant," and get the most super- 
ficial praise ! 

The Ancient. Come, come ! This is a sort of per- 
sonality. Who 's next ? 

Galahad. Zoilus was ready first. 

Zoilus. Yes, and none too soon. Mrs. Barrett 
Browning was a tough subject for me, and I was glad to 
get her off my hands. Do you know that it is much 
more difficult to travesty a woman's poem than a 
man's ? {Reads.) 

GWENDOLTNE. 

'T was not the brown of chestnut boughs 

That shadowed her so finely : 
It was the hair that swept her brows. 

And framed her face divinely j 



124 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

-Her tawny hair, lier purple eyes, 
The spirit was ensphered in. 

That took you with such swift surprise. 
Provided you had peered in. 

Her velvet foot amid the moss 

Aud on the daisies patted, 
As, queridous with sense of loss, 

It tore the herbage matted : 
" Aud come he early, come he late," 

She saith, " it wiU undo me ; 
The sharp fore-speeded shaft of fate 

Already quivers through me. 

" When I beheld his red-roan steed, 

I kuevv what aim impelled it ; 
And that dim scarf of silver brede, 

I guessed for whom he held it : 
I recked not, while he flaunted by. 

Of Love's relentless vi'lcnce. 
Yet o'er me crashed the summer sky. 

In thunders of blue silence. 

" His hoof-prints crumbled down the vale, 

But left behind their lava ; 
"What should have been my woman's mail 

Grew jellied as guava : 
I looked him proud, but 'ueath my pride 

I felt a boneless tremor ; 
He was the Beer, I descried, 

And I was but the Seemer ! 

" Ah, how to be what then I seemed. 
And bid him seem that is so ! 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 125 

We always tangle threads we dreamed, 

And contravene our bliss so. 
I see the red-roan steed again ! 

He looks, as something sought he : 
Why, hoity-toity ! — he \% fain, 

So /'ll be cold and haughty ! " 

TiTE Ancient. You have done about as well as could 
be expected ; but I am not sure that I should have recog- 
nized it, without the red-roan steed and the thunders of 
blue silence. However, Mrs. Browning's force is always 
so truly feminine that one cannot easily analyze it. There 
is an underlying weakness — or, at least, a sense of reliance 
— when she is most vigorous, and you feel the beating 
of an excited pulse when she is most calmly classic. Slie 
often slips into questionable epitliets and incongruous 
images, I grant you ; but I can see the first form of her 
thought through them. 

Galahad. Has any other woman reached an equal 
height in English poetry? 

The Chorus. No! 

The Gannet. George Eliot ? 

ZoiLUS. Now you bring the two squarely before my 
mind, I also say, No ! I do not rightly know where to 
place George Eliot. 

The Ancient. Among the phenomena, — unsur- 
passed as a prose writer, and with every quality of the 
poet except the single one which is born and never 
acquired. It is amazing to see how admirable her verse 
is, and how near to high poetry, — as if only a sheet of 
plate-glass were between, — and yet it is not poetry. 
Her lines are like the dancing figures on a frieze, sym- 



126 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

metry itself, but they do not move. When I read them, 
I am always on the very verge of recognizing her as 
a poet, always expecting the warm-blooded measures 
which sing their way into my own blood, and yet I never 
cross the invisible boundary. 

The Gannet. Shall we go on ? I have Bayard Tay- 
lor, who took possession of me readily enough. I know 
his earlier Oriental better than his later poems. He 
does n't seem to have any defiuite place yet as a poet. 

ZoiLUS. Then it comes of having too many irons in 
the fire. 

Galahad. He may have made some mistakes ; in- 
deed, I think so, myself; but I find signs of a struggle 
towards some new form of development in his later 
poems, and mean to give him a little more opportunity. 
His rhetoric is at the same time his strength and his 
weakness, for it has often led him away from the true 
substance of poetry. 

The Ancient. There you are riglit, Galahad. Na- 
ture and the sensuous delight of life for a while got the 
upper liand of him, and he wrote many things which 
aimed to be more, and were not. I think better of his 
later direction; but how far it will carry him depends 
on his industry and faith. Let us have the echo ! 

The Gannet. {Reads) 

HADRAMAUT. 

The grand conglomerate hills of Arahy 

That stand empanoplicd in utmost thought, 
"With dazzling ramparts front the Indian sea, 
Down there iu Iladraniaut. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 127 

The sunshine smashes in the doors of morn 

And leaves them open ; there the vibrant calm 
Of life magniloquent pervades forlorn 
The giant fronds of palm. 

The cockatoo upon the upas screams ; 

The armadillo fluctuates o'er the hill ; 
And like a flag, incarnadined in dreams. 
All crimsonly I thrill ! 

There have iconoclasts no power to harm, 
So, folded grandly in translucent mist, 
I let the light stream down my jasper arm. 
And o'er my opal fist. 

An Adamite of old, primeval Earth, 

I see the Sphinx upon the porphyry shore, 
Deprived of utterance ages ere her birth. 
As I am, — only more ! 

Who shall ensnare me with invested gold. 

Or paper symbols, backed like malachite ? 
Let gaunt reformers objurgate and scold, 
I gorge me with delight. 

I do not yearn for what I covet most ; 

I give the winds the passionate gifts I sought ; 
And slumber fiercely on the torrid coast, 
Down there in Hadramaut ! 

Galahad. That is extravagantly and absurdly like 
some of his poems. You seem to have had in your mind 
the very feature I mentioned, — his rhetoric. I doubt 
whether I shall succeed as well with Boker. He and 



128 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Bayard Taylor are both Pennsylvanians, of nearly the 
same age, yet they are not at all alike. 

TuE A>xiENT. I remember Boker's first Tolnme. 
There was a flavor of the Elizabethan English about it, 
which was unusual at the time. Then came his tragedy 
of " Calaynos," one of the few successful modern plays 
formed on the old classic models; it ran for nearly a 
hundred nights in England. But you cannot imitate his 
best work, which is in this and the later plays ; you must 
choose between his ballads and his sonnets. 

Galahad. I have tried something half ballad and 
half song, in his style. {Reads.) 

PHEBE THE FAIR. 

I lie and I languish for Phebe the Fair, 

Ah, welladay ! 
The blue of her eyes, the brown of her hair. 
The elbows that dance and the ankles that gleam. 
As she bends at her washing-tub there by the stream. 
Disdaining to see me, so what ctm I say 

But, ah, welladay! 

I met her last night when the moon was at full, 

Alas and alack ! 
Bewitchingly hooded with mufflers of wool ; 
Her cloak of gray duffle she wore to a chann, 
So boldly I otTered the maiden my arm, 
But she coolly responded, " You take the back track ! " 

Alas and alack! 

Though I 'm but a blacksmith and Hugo a lord, 
Sing hey, nouny nonny ! 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 129 

Though I 've but a hammer and he has a sword. 
When he leans from his destrier Phebe to greet, 
I could smash him to cinders before her white feet. 
For lords have no business with maidens so bonny, 
Sing hey, nonny nonny ! 

I 've given up Margery, given up Maud, 

Ah, welladay, Phebe ! 
But the snow of your bosom by love is unthawed ; 
The hues of my life are all fading, I guess. 
As the calico fades in the suds that you press : 
You are scouring the heart of your languishing G. B., 

Ah, welladay, Phebe ! 

The Gannet. I remember those ballads, with a 
curious antique flavor about tliem ; but I am best ac- 
quainted with Boker's sonnets. I don't think tliej have 
been appreciated as they deserve; but tlien, there are 
hardly twelve sonnets in the English language which can 
be called popular. Take one of Keats, three of Words- 
worth, three of Milton, possibly Blanco White's one, and 
four or five of Shakespeare, and you have nearly all that 
are familiarly known. I '11 try my hand at an imitation 
of Boker's grave, sustained measure. {Writes.) 

The Ancient. No one of our authors is so isolated 
as he, and it is a double disadvantage. Wlien Philadel- 
phia ceased to be a literary centre, which happened very 
suddenly and unexpectedly, the tone of society there 
seemed to change. Instead of tlie open satisfaction of 
Boston in her brilliant circle of authors, or the passive 
indifference of our New York, there is almost a positive 
depreciation of home talent in Philadelphia. Boker is 
6* I 



130 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

most disparaged in his native city, and most appreciated 
in New England. There is always less of petty eilvy 
where the range of culture is highest. 

ZoiLUS. No, there is not less, granting the culture to 
be higher ; there is only more tact and policy in express- 
ing it. 

The Gannet. Listen to Boker's 999th. sonnet, dic- 
tated through me! {Reads) 

I charge not with degrees of excellence 

That fair revolt which rested on thy name. 

Nor burden with uncompreheiided blame 

The speech, Avhich still eludes my swooning sense, 

Though this poor rhyme at least were some defence 

Against thy chill suspicion : yet, if Fame 

Lift up and burnish what is now my shame, 

'T would mitigate a passion so intense. 

This trampled verse awhile my heart relieves 

From stringent pain, that cleft me as I turned 

Away from beauty, graciously displayed ; 

And still one dominant emotion cleaves 

The clouds, whereon thy passing lustre burned. 

And leaves behind it gulfs of blacker shade. 

Galahad. How could you echo the tone and atmos- 
phere of a sonnet, without adding one particle of sense? 

The Ganxet. Attribute it to my empty head, if you 
please. I really cannot explain how these imitations 
arise in my mind. In the " trance condition," you know, 
one is void of all active consciousness. 

Zoi'Lus. If you go on indulging such an idea, you 
■will end by becoming a professional medium. 



DIVERSIONS OE THE ECHO CLUB. 131 

The Gannet. Well, — at least I '11 dictate to the 
world better verse than has ever yet come, in that way, 
from the unfortunate dead poets. 

Galahad. Could you equal Demosthenes ? 

The Ancient. Tor the sake of Human Reason let 
us drop that subject ! There are some aberrations which 
dishearten us, and it is best simply to turn our backs 
on them. Tor my part, I crave music. Zoilus, give us 
Herrick's "Julia," before the stirrup-cup! 




NIGHT THE SEVENTH. 




HIS night the Gannet led the way to the more 
earnest conversation, by returning to a point 
touched by the Ancient at their fifth meeting. 
He said, " I should like to know wherein the 
period of fermentation, which precedes the appearance 
of an important era in Hterature, and the period of sub- 
sidence, or decadence, which follows it, diifer from each 
otlier." 

ZoiLUS. H'm ! that 's rather a tough problem to be 
solved at a moment's warning. I should guess that the 
diiference is something like that between the first and 
second childhood of an individual. In the first case, tlie 
faults are natural, heedless, graceful, and always suggest- 
ive of sometliing to be developed ; in the latter, tlicy are 
helpless repetitions, which point only towards the past. 

Galahad. Are you not taking the correspondence 
for granted ? Is it exactly justified by the history of any 
great era in literature ? 

The Ancient. Not entirely. But there is surely an 
irregular groping for new modes of thouglit and new 
forms of expression, in advance ; and a struggle, after 
the masters of the age have gone, to keep up their pitch 
of achievement. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 133 

The Gannet. Very well; you are near enough in 
accord to consider my next question. In which period 
are we living at present? The Ancient says that we 
have had the heroes and the epigonoi, and that there will 
be many fallow years : T, on the contrar}^ feel very sure 
that we are approaching another great era ; and the con- 
fusion of which he spoke the other night is an addi- 
tional proof of it. 

The Ancient. If you remember, I disclaimed any 
power of prediction. 

The Gannet. So you did ; but I insist that the rea- 
sons you gave are just as powerful against your conclu- 
sions, unless you can show us that the phenomena of our 
day are those whicli invariably characterize a period of 
decadence. I have been reflecting upon the subject with 
more earnestness than is usual to me. , In our modern 
literature I do not find echoes of any other than the 
masters who are still living and producing, especially 
Browning, Longfellow, and Tennyson ; the faint reflec- 
tions of Poe seem to have ceased ; and the chief cliarac- 
teristic of this day, so far as the younger authors are 
concerned, is a straining after novel eifects, new cos- 
tumes for old thoughts, if you please, but certainly 
something very different from a mere repetition of forms 
of style which already exist. That there is confusion, an 
absence of pure, clearly outlined ideals of art, I am will- 
ing to admit. I accept the premises, but challenge the 
inferences, 

Galahad. I am only too ready to agree with you. 

The Ancient. What I wish is, that we should try 
to comprehend the literary aspects of our time. If we 



134 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

can turn our modem habit of introversion away from our 
individual selves, and give it more of an objective char- 
acter (though this sounds rather paradoxical), it will be a 
gain in every way. A period of decadence is not neces- 
sarily characterized by repetition ; it may manifest itself 
in exactly such straining for effect as the Gannet admits. 
Poe, for instance, or Heine, or Browning, makes a new 
manner successful ; what more natural, then, than that 
an inferior poet should say to himself, " Tlie manner is 
everything; I will invent one for myself! " I find some- 
thing too much of this prevalent, and it does not inspire 
me with hope. 

ZoiLUS. But the costume of the thought, as of the 
man, is really more important than the body it hides. And 
I insist that manner is more than symmetry, or even 
strength, as the French have been shrewd enough to 
discover. We are moving towards an equal brilliancy 
of style, only most of us are zigzagging on all sides of 
the true path. But we sliall find it, and then, look out 
for a shining age of literature ! 

The Gannet {to The Ancient). You were speaking 
of the introversion which is such a characteristic of 
modern thought. Can a writer avoid it, without show- 
ing, in tlie very effort, that he possesses it ? 

The Ancient. I doubt it. Goethe tried the experi- 
ment, and did not fairly succeed. It seems to me that 
the cliaractcr of an author is relative to the liighcst cul- 
ture of liis generation. I have never fovnid that there 
was much development without self-study ; for the true 
artist must know the exact measure of his qualities, in 
order to use them in his one true way. This is a law as 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 135 

applicable to Shakespeare as to you ; but lie may choose 
to conceal the process, and you may choose to betray it. 
For a poet to speculate upon his own nature, in his 
poems, is a modern fashion, which originated with 
Wordsworth. To us it seems an over-consciousness ; 
yet it may seem the height of naive candor, and therefore 
a delightful characteristic, to the critics of two centuries 
hence. 

ZoiLUS. Well, upon my word. Ancient, you are the 
most bewildering of guides ! You talk of eternal laws, 
you refer to positive systems, but when we come to apply 
them, there is nothing permanent, nothing settled, only a 
labyrinth of perhapses and may-seems. What are we to 
do? 

The Gannet {offering the hat). To draw your name, 
and write. 

ZoiLUS {drawing). Julia Ward Howe: and I feel no 
mission within me ! I shall miserably fail. 

The Gannet. Jean Ingelow : I need no mission. 

Galahad. The saints help me ! Walt Whitman. 
, The Ancient. Buchanan Read : / must call on the 
Pope, to judge from the last poem of his which I have 
read. There are but one or two more slips in the hat : 
whom have we ? Piatt, Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller ! 
Galahad, I suggest that you return our yawping cosmos, 
and take Piatt in his stead ; then let us add John Hay, 
and we shall have all the latest names together for our 
next and final night of diversions. 

The Gannet. I second your proposal. It will sepa- 
rate the last and most curious phenomena in poetry from 
those which preceded them. Perhaps we may be able 
to guess what they portend. 



136 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Galahad {changhig the name). I am so grateful for 
the permission, tliat I will write two ; adding to the imi- 
tation of Piatt that of the author of " A Woman's Poems," 
in whose poetical fortunes, I imagine, he feels more inter- 
est tliau even in his own. I am attracted bj her poems 
as the Gannet is attracted by Mrs. Stoddard's, though the 
two are wholly unlike. In " The Woman " I also see in- 
dications of a struggle between thought and language, a 
reluctance to catch the flying Psyche by the wings, and 
hold her until every w^avering outline is clear. Women- 
poets generally stand in too much awe of their own con- 
ceptions. 

ZoiLUS {solemnly). I am possessed! Procul, pro- 
cul, — or at least be silent. {Whites.) 

{All write steadily, and finish their tasks nearly at the same 
time.) 

The Chorus. You came up so nearly neck and neck, 
that only we who timed you can decide. The Gannet 
first. 

The Gannet. Then hearken to Jean Ingclow. 
{Reads.) 

THE SHRIMP-GATHERERS. 

Scarlet spaces of sand and ocean, 

Gulls that circle antl winds that blow ; 

Baskets and boats and men in motion. 
Sailing and scattering to and fro. 

Girls arc waiting, their wimples adorning 
"With crimson sprinkles the broad gray flood; 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 137 

And down the beach the blush of the morning 
Shines reflected from moisture and mud. 

Broad from the yard the sail hangs limpy ; 

Lightly the steersman whistles a lay ; 
Pull with a will, for the nets are shrimpy, 

Pull with a whistle, our hearts are gay ! 

Tuppence a quart ; there are more than fifty ! 

Coffee is certain, and beer galore : 
Coats are corduroy, minds are thrifty, 

"Won't we go it on sea and shore ! 

See, behind, how the hills are freckled 

With low white huts, where the lasses bide ! 

See, before, how the sea is speckled 

With sloops and schooners that wait the tide ! 

Yarmouth fishers may rail and roister, 
Tyne-side boys may shout, " Give way ! " 

Let them dredge for the lobster and oyster. 
Pink and sweet are our shrimps to-day ! 

Shrimps and the delicate periwinkle. 

Such are the sea-fruits lasses love : 
Ho ! to your nets till the blue stars twinkle. 

And the shutterless cottages gleam above ! 

The Choeus. A very courteous echo. The Ancient 
■was next. 

The Ancient. I think if Buchanan Eead had confined 
himself to those short, sweet, graceful lyrics by which he 
first became known, he would have attained a better suc- 
cess. It is singular, by the by, that his art does not color 



138 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Lis poetry, as in Hossetti's case ; no one could guess that 
he is also a painter. But I remember that Washington 
Allston is a similar iustauce. Read's best poems are 
those which have a pastoral character, and I have turned 
to them for his characteristic manner. {Reads.) 



A SYLVAN SCENE. 

The moon, a reaper of the ripened stars, 
Held out her silver sickle in the Avest ; 

I leaned against the shadowy pasture-bars, 
A hermit, with a burden in my breast. 

The lilies leaned beside me as I stood ; 

The lilied heifers gleamed beneath the shed ; 
And spirits from the high ancestral wood 

Cast their articulate benisons on my head. 

The twilight oriole sang her valentine 

From pendulous nests above the stable-sill. 

And Uke a beggar, asking alms and wine, 
Came the importunate murmur of the mill. 

Love threw his flying shuttle through my woof, 
And made the web a pattern I abhorred ; 

Wherefore alone I sang, and far aloof, 

My melting melodies, mightier than the sword. 

The white-sleeved mowers, coming slowly home, 
"With scythes like rainbows on their shoulders hung, 

Suiflt'd not, in passing me, the scent of Rome, 
Nor licard the nmsic trickling from my tongue. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 139 

The milkmaid, following, delayed her step, 

Still singing as she left the stable-yard : 
'T was "Sheridan's Ride" she sang: I turned and wep', 

For woman's homage soothes the suffering bard ! 

Gk\LAHAD. Why did n't you take Read's " Drifting " ? 

The Ancient. It is a beautiful poem, but would 
betray itself in any imitation. My object was to catch 
his especial poetic dialect. 

The Chorus. Now, Zoilus. 

ZoiLus. I have followed exactly the Ancient's plan, 
but with the disadvantage of not having read Mrs. 
Howe's " Passion Flowers " lately ; so I was forced to 
take whatever features were accessible, from her prose as 
well as verse. (Reads.) 



THE COMING RACE. 

When with crisped fingers I have tried to part 

The petals which compose 
The azure flower of high aesthetic art, 

More firmly did they close. 

Yet woman is not undeveloped man, — 

So singeth Tennyson : 
Desire, that ever Duty's feet outran, 

Begins, but sees not done. 

Our life is full of passionate dismay 

At larger schemes grown small ; 

That which thou doest, do this very day. 
Then art thou known of all. 



140 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

The thing that was ungerms the thing to be ; 

Before reflects Behind ; 
So blends our moral trigonometry 

"With spheroids of the mind. 

Time shall transfigure many a paradox. 

Now crushed with hoofs of scorn. 

When in the beauty of the hollyhocks 
The Coming Man is born. 

His hand the new Evangels then shall hold. 

That make earth epicene. 
And on his shoulder, coifled with chrismal gold. 

The Coming AYoman lean ! 

The Gaj^net. 0, she should not lean on his shoul- 
der ! That is a dependent attitude. 

ZoiLus. I know ; but there is the exigency of an im- 
mediate rhyme, and " epicene " is a word which I could 
not sacrifice. 

The Anciext. You have bit upon one of the vices 
of our literary class, — the superficial refinement w-hich 
vents itself on words and phrases. I have seen expres- 
sions of both love and grief which were too elegant for 
passion. The strong thought always finds the best 
speech, but as its total form : it does not pause to prink 
itself by the w^ay, or to study its face in a glass. I beg 
pardon, Zoilus ; I am not speaking of, hnt/roni, you. 

ZoiLUS. As the sinner furnishes more texts than the 
saint. 

The Chorus. Let us not keep Galahad waiting. 

Galahad. I promised two, but have only finished 
the firtit. The Gannct must keep mc company ; for we 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 141 

were iiigli forgetting William Winter, and he must be 
entertained before our board is cleared for the last com- 
ers. 1 dare say we shall remember others; indeed, I 
can think of several who ought to please the Ancient, for 
tliey simply give us their ideas without any manner at 
all. 

The Ancient. Sarcasm from Galahad is sarcasm in- 
deed ! I am assailed on all sides, to-night. But let us 
have Piatt ; we have all looked through his " Western 
Windows." 

Galahad.' {Reads.) 

THE OLD FENCE-RAIL. 

It lies and rots by the roadside, 

Among the withering weeds ; 
The blackberry -vines run o'er it, 

And the thistles drop their seeds. 

Below, the Miami murmurs; 

He flows as he always flowed ; 
And the people, eastward and westward. 

Travel the National Road. 

At times a maiden's glances 

Gild it Avith tints of dawn. 
But the school-boy snorts with his nostrils. 

Kicks it, and hastens on. 

Above it the pioneer's chimney. 

Lonely and rickety, leans ; 
Beside it the pioneer's garden 

Is a wildering growth of greens. 



142 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

It was split by the stahvart settler, 

One of the ancient race. 
And the hands of his to\v-haired children 

Lifted it into its place. 

Years after the gawky lover 

Sat on it, dangling his heels, 
"While his girl forgot her milking. 

And the pen, with its hungry squeals. 

Ah, the rail has its own romances, 
The scenes and changes of years: 

I pause whenever I see it. 
And drop on it several tears. 

ZoiLUS. Don't you all feel, "witli me, that our imita- 
tions become more and more difficult as we take the 
younger authors who give us sentiment, fancy, pure 
luetres, — in short, very agreeable and meritorious work, 
— but who neither conquer us by their daring nor pro- 
voke us by offending our tastes ? 

The Ancient. We foresaw this, the first evening, 
you will remember. There are many excellent poets, 
who cannot be amusingly travestied, — Collins, or Gold- 
smith, for example. I was just deliberating whether to 
suggest the names of two women who have written very 
good poems, Lucy Larcom and she who calls lierself " H. 
H." Tlie former has rhetoric and rhythm, and uses both 
quite independently ; her " Hannah Binding Shoes '' 
struck an original vein, which I wisli she had gone on 
f[uarryiug. But her finest poem, " Tlie Rose Enthroned," 
could only l)c ajipreciated by about one per cent of her 
readers. " U. 11." shows delicacy and purity of senti- 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 143 

merit, yet her verse is not precisely song. Her ear fails 
to catch the rarer music which lurks behind metrical cor- 
rectness. I don't well see how either could be imitated ; 
so we will leave the Gannet and Galahad to their second 
task. 

The Gannet {looking up). What you have been say- 
ing also applies to my present model. Just the best 
poems in his " Witness " are so simple, so sweetly and 
smoothly finished, so marked by pure taste and delicate 
fancy, that a good travesty would have the air of a seri- 
ous imitation. 

ZoiLUS {to the Ancient). However we may disagree, 
I heartily join you in relishing a marked individuality in 
poetry. 

The Ancient. When it is honest, when it frankly 
expresses tlie individual nature, not too much restricted 
by the conventionalisms of the day, nor yielding too in- 
dolently to the influences of other minds. It is a notable 
characteristic of nearly all our younger poets, that they 
wander, as if at random, over such a wide field, before 
selecting their separate paths. One cause of this, I should 
guess, is the seduction exercised by that refinement in 
form, that richness and variety of metrical eifect, which 
marks our modern poetry. Twenty years ago, our only 
criticism almost ignored the idea in a poem ; it concerned 
itself with words, lines, or stanzas, italicizing every agree- 
able little touch of fancy, as a guide to the reader. Leigh 
Hunt made this fashion popular ; Poe imitated him ; and 
our young authors were taught to believe in detached 
beauties of expression, instead of pure and symmetrical 
conceptions. Take the earlier poems of Stoddard, Read, 



144 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Aldricli, Bayard Taylor, and others, and you cannot fail 
to see how they were led astray. 

ZoiLUS. Then, I suppose, their genuine poetical qual- 
ity is tested by the extent to which they have emanci- 
pated tliemselves from those early influences, and dis- 
covered their proper individualities ? 

The Ancient. Most certainly ; and if you had grown 
up with the generation, as I have (being very little older), 
you would see, as I do now, how each is strugghng out 
of the general wilderness. Boker had not far to go ; he 
grew up under the broad wings of the old English drama- 
tists. Stoddard first struck his highest performance in 
"The Fisher and Charon," and Stedman in his "Alec- 
tryon," though both are still best known by their lighter 
lyrics. Aldrich seems now to be aware of his native grace 
and delicacy of fancy, and Howells of the sportive, light- 
some element, wliich the Weltschnerz of youth for a time 
suppressed. In his "Pastorals," Bayard Taylor seems 
inclined to seek for the substance of poetry, rather than 
the flash and glitter of its rhetorical drapery. Piatt is 
turning more and more to that which lies nearest bim : 
in short, without pretending to decide how far each is 
successful, I tliink that each, now, is attendhig seriously 
to his own special work. 

ZoiLUS. How much longer do you give them, to reach 
their highest planes of performance ? 

The Ancient. All their lives; and I refer you to 
Bryant, Emerson, Longfellow, and Wliittier, as instances 
of continuous development. If our American atmospliere, 
as you said the other night, retards the growth of literary 
men, you cannot deny that it wonderfully prolongs the 
period of their growth. 



DIVERSIONS OP THE ECHO CLUB. 145 

The Gannet. Here have Galahad and myself been 
"Waiting with our manuscripts, knowing that you two can 
never agree, but hoping that each might exhaust the 
other. 

ZoiLUS. This from you, for wliom there is neither 
time, space, nor place, when you get fairly started ! But 
who are you now ? 

The Gannet. William Winter, at your service. 
{Reads.) 

LOVE'S DIET. 

There be who crave the flavors rich 

Of boneless turkey and of beef; 
There be who seek the relish which 

To palsied palates brings relief: 
But I, in love's most patient hush. 
Partake with thee of simple mush. 

The pheasant seems so bright of wing, 
Because 't is wedded with expense ; 

The rarer Strasburg pasties bring 
But fleet enjoyment to the sense; 

Yet common things, that seem too nigh. 

Both purse and heart may satisfy. 

'T is sweet to browse on dishes rare, 
When those who give them can affbrd : 

Sweeter this unpretending fare, 
When thou art seated at the board, 

With spoony fingers tounfold 

The yielding mush's mass of gold. 

7 J 



146 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Thou pour'st the milk that Avhiter seems 

Than is the orbit of thy brow, 
And I indulge with lamb -like dreams, 

And many a Avhite and harmless vow ; 
I only wish that there could be 
One bowl, not two, for thee and me. 

ZoiLUS. I "was not expecting even so much success. 

The Gannet. Galahad was generous, to give me the 
lighter task. It Tvould have quite bewildered me to im- 
itate " A Woman's Poems," because their chief charac- 
teristic is a ps3Thological one. If we had taken that 
wonderful volume of the songstresses of the " South- 
Land," now — 

ZoiLUS. That reminds me of a graceful Southern 
singer, who is like a bard alone in tlie desert, — Paul H. 
Hayne. Talk of our lack of sympathy and encourage- 
ment, here, in New York ! What mate has he, for hun- 
dreds of miles around liim ? Why, there is not even the 
challenge of a rival lance ; he must ride arouud the lonely- 
lists, with neither antagonist to prove his mettle, uor 
queen to crown him for success. 

The Ancient. An author must have an audience, 
liowever thin. We are told that Poetry is its own ex- 
ceeding great reward : very well : but what if you sing 
your song into the air and never find it again in the 
heart of a friend? Genius. without sympathetic recogni- 
tion is like a kindled fire without fiue or draught; it 
smoulders miserably away instead of leaping, sparkling, 
and giving cheer. I have seen some parts of the country 
where a man of sensitive, poetical nature would surely 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 147 

die, if he could not escape. We ought to be very tender 
towards all honest efforts in literature. 

Galahad. The "Woman" whom I have imitated 
needs only the encounter of kind, yet positive minds, to 
give her dreams what they still lack, — a distinct reality. 
I have purposely tried to exaggerate her principal fault, 
for it was the only thing I could do. {Reads.) 



THE PLASTER CAST. 

The white thought sleeps in it enshrined, 

Though mean and cheap the substance seems, 

As sleep conceptions in the mind. 
Hardened, and unreleased by dreams. 

A parrot only ! yet the child 

Stares with untutored, dim surprise. 
And fain would know what secret mild 

Is ambushed in those moveless eyes. 

His cherry from the painted beak 

Falls, when his gentle hand would give. 

So early some return we seek 

From that which only seems to live. 

Ah, let us even these symbols guard. 
Nor shatter them with curious touch; 

For, should we break ideals hard, 

The fragments would not move us much. 

ZoiLUS. You have fairly bewildered me, Galahad. I 
thought there was an actual idea in the verses, but it 
slips from my hand like an eel. 



148 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

The Axcient. It would better answer for the trav- 
esty of a school which has a limited popularity at present, 
but to which "A Woman" does not belong. 

Galahad. AVhat school ? I know of none such. 

The Axciext. The most active members would no 
doubt be much astonished if I were to tell them of it ; 
but it is a kind of school, nevertheless. I think it must 
have originated as long ago as the days of The Dial, and 
has not yet wholly gone out of fashion with a rather large 
class of readers. You will find plenty of specimens in 
newspapers of a mixed religious and literary character, 
and now and then in the magazines. 

The Chorus. Give us its peculiarities. 

The Ancient. First, great gravity, if not solemnity 
of tone ; a rhythm, sometimes weak, sometimes hard, but 
usually halting ; obscurity and incoherence of thought, 
and a perpetual reference to abstract morality. 

ZoiiLUs. Don't describe, but iuiitate. 

The Ancient. I could give you a stanza, by way of 
illustration. Furnish me with a subject, — anything you 
please. (ZoiLUS writes.) The Fifth Wheel! that will 
answer; for the poets of tliis school always begin far 
away from their themes. The first stanza might run 
thus : — 

From sunshine and from moral truth 
Let Life be woven athwart thy breast! 

The rapid cycles of thy youth 
But letter Duty's solemn quest. 

Omnes. Go on ! 

The Ancient. Now I may got a little nearer to 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 149 

the subject, though I don't clearly see how. {After a 
pause.) 

Vibration gives but faint assent 

To that which in thee seems complete. 

But time evolves the Incident 

Behind the dust-driven chariot's feet. 

Be well provided ! Overplus 

Is Life's stern law, none can evade ; 

Thon to the goal shalt hasten thus, 

When selfish natures' wheels are stayed. 

Zoi'Lus. Great Jove ! to think that I never discovered 
the undying Laura Matilda in this prim disguise ! It is 
the languishing creature grown older, with a high-necked 
dress, a linen collar, and all her curls brushed smooth ! 
Ancient, you have purged mine eyes from visual film; 
this boon wipes out all remembrance of our strife. 

Omnes. Enough for to-night ! [Exeunt. 




NIGHT THE EIGHTH. 




{All the members -prompihj on hand.) 

HE CHOllUS. Ho\7 niucli does any author 
distinctly know of himself, or the quality of 
his works ? 

ZoiLUS. Not much. 

Galahad. Everything ! 

The Gannet. Only Avhat makes a hit, and what 
does n't. 

The Ancient. It depends on wlio and what the 
autlior is : you will find both extremes represented. 

The Chorus. Yourselves, for instance ! 

ZoiLUS. To be frank, I think I have more merit than 
luck. But when I come to contrast the degrees of 
jiopularity with the cliaracter of the performance, I am 
])uzzled. 

Galahad. Popularity has nothing to do with it. I 
know that some of my qualities are genuine, while other 
necessary ones are weakly represented. Our talk, the 
last night, satisfied me that I have not yet found the one 
best direction ; but, on the other hand, one dare not force 
one's own development, and I think I see whither I am 
tendinir. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 151 

The Gannet. Do you want to see wliere you stand 
now, or very nearly the spot ? 
Galahad. Show me if you can ? 

(The Gannet takes a sheet of pa'per and writes}) 

ZoiLTjs {to The Ancient). Do you think that a poet 
is generally a correct judge of his own works ? 

The Ancient. Please, don't repeat that dismal plati- 
tude ! A genuine poet is always the best judge of his 
own works, simply because he has an ideal standard by 
which he measures whatever he does. He may not be 
able to guess what will be most popular ; he may attach 
an exorbitant value to that which is born of some occult 
individual mood, in which few others can ever share ; but 
in regard to the quality of the calm, ripened product of 
his brain he cannot be mistaken ! To admit that he can 
be, substitutes chance for law in the poetic art, and brings 
us down to the vulgar idea of a wayward and accidental 
inspiration, instead of conscious growth followed by con- 
scious achievement. 

ZoiLUS. You astonish me. 

The Ancient. Then be glad; it is a sign that you 
are not poetically blasL 

Galahad. Never ! One can never be that. 

The Gannet. Wait till you hear how your theorbo 
sounds in my ears. What I have attempted is a serious, 
not a comical, echo of your style. 

Omnes. Give it to us ! 

The Gannet. Keep Galahad's hands off me till I 
have finished. {Reads.) 



152 DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

THE TWO LIVES. 

Down in the dL41 I wandered, 
The loneliest of our dells, 

Where grow the lowland lilies, 
Dropping their foam-white bells, 

And the brook among the grasses 
Toys with its sand and shells. 

Fair were the meads and thickets, 
And sumptuous grew the trees. 

And the folding hills of harvest 

Were lulled with the fanning breeze, 

But I heai'd, beyond the valley. 
The roar of the plunging seas. 

The birds and the vernal grasses, 
They wooed me sweetly and long. 

But the magic of ocean called me, 
Murmuring vast and strong; 

Plerc was the ilute-like cadence, 
There was the world-wide song! 

" Lie in the wood's embraces, 
Sleep in the dcU's repose! " 

" Float on the limitless azure, 
Flecked with its foamy snows! " 

Such were the changing voices, 
Heard at the twilight's close. 

Free with the winds and waters, 
Nestled in shade and dcw: 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 153 

Bliss in the soft green shelter, 

Fame on the boundless blue ; 
"Which shall I yield forever? 

Which forever pursue? 

Ow^Y.'s, {clapping their hands) . Galaliad! Galahad! 

Galahad {with a melancholy air). It is worse than 
the most savage criticism. There is just enough of my 
own sentiment and poetical manner in it, to show me how 
monstrously blind I have been in not perceiving that 
scores of clever fellows may write the same things, if 
they should choose. I ought to relapse into the corner 
of a country newspaper. 

The Ancient. Take heart, my dear boy! We all 
begin with sentiment and melodious rhythm, — or what 
seems to us to be such. We all discover the same old 
metaphors over again, and they are as new to us as if 
they had never been used before. Very few young poets 
have the slightest presentiment of their coming develop- 
ment. They have the keenest delight, the profoundest 
satisfaction, with their crudest works. With knowledge 
comes the sense of imperfection, which increases as they 
rise in performance. Remember that the Gannet is five 
or six years older than you, and can now write in cold 
blood what only comes from the sunnuer heat of your 
mind. 

Galahad. I understand you, and don't mean to be 
discouraged. But Zoilus is fully avenged now. 

ZoiiLus. I '11 prove it by my notice of your next poem 

in the . Let us turn to our remaining models. 

Whatever may be thought of them at home, they have 
7* 



154 DIVERSIONS or THE ECHO CLUB. 

all made a very positive impression in England ; ho"w^ do 
you account for it, Ancient ? 

The Ancient. I can only guess at an explanation, 
apart from the merits wliicli three of them certainly pos- 
sess. While the average literary culture in England was 
perhaps never so high as now, the prevalent style of writ- 
ing was never so conventional. The sensational school, 
which has been so popular here as well as there, is begin- 
ning to fatigue the majority of readers, yet it still spoils 
their enjoyment of simple, honest work ; so, every new 
a])pearance in literature, which is racy, which carries the 
flavor of a fresh soil with it, unconventional yet seemingly 
natural, neither suggesting the superficial refinement of 
which they are surfeited nor the nobler refinement which 
they have forgotten how to relish, — all such appearances, 
I suspect, furnish just the change they crave. 

The Gannet. But the changes of popular taste in the 
two countries are very similar. This is evident in the 
cases of Bret Harte and Hay ; but Walt Whitman seems 
to have a large circle of enthusiastic admirers in England, 
and only some half-dozen discijilcs among us. Do you 
suppose that the passages of his "Leaves of Grass," 
which are prose catalogues to us, or the phrases which 
are our slang, have a kind of poetical charm there, be- 
cause they are not understood ? 

ZoiLUS. As Tartar or Mongolian "Leaves of Grass '* 
might have to us ? Very likely. There are splendid lines 
and brief passages in Walt Whitman: there is a modern, 
half- Bowery-boy, luUf-Emersonian apprehension of tiie old 
Greek idea of physical life, which nuiny take to be wholly 
new on account of the singular form iu which it is pre- 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 155 

sented. I will even admit that the elements of a jfine 
poet exist in him, in a state of chaos. It is curious that 
while liB proclaims his human sympathies to he without 
bounds, his intellectual sympathies should be so narrow. 
There never was a man at once so arrogant, and so ten- 
der towards his fellow-men. 

The Ancient. You have very correctly described him. 
The same art which he despises would have increased his 
power and influence. He forgets that the poet must not 
only have somewhat to say, but must strenuously acquire 
the power of saying it most purely and completely. A 
truer sense of art would have prevented that fault which 
has been called immorality, but is only a coarse, offensive 
frankness. 

The Gannet. Let us divide our labors. There is 
only one name apiece : how shall we apportion them ? 

ZoiLUS. Take Joaquin Miller, and give Walt Whit- 
man to the Ancient. Choose of these two, Galahad ! 

Galahad {opening the paper). Bret Harte. 

ZoiLUS. Then Hay remains to me. 

i^rhey all write steadili/ for half an hour.) 

The Gannet. Our last is our most difficult task ; for 
we have to give the local flavor of the poetry, as well as 
its peculiar form and tone. 

ZoiLUS. I should like to know how much of that local 
flavor is genuine. I am suspicious of Bret Harte's Cali- 
fornia dialect : some features of it are evidently English, 
and very suggestive of Dickens. Hay's is nearer the real 
thing. Miller's scenery and accessories also inspire me 
with doubt. Now, much of the value of this genre poetry 
(as I should call it) depends upon its fidelity to nature. 



156 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Sham slang and sham barbarism are worse than sham 
refinement and luxury. 

The Ancient. Harte's use of " which " as au exple- 
tive is certainly an English peculiarity, which he may have 
heard it in some individual miner, but which it is not a 
feature of California slang. So, when Higgles says " O, 
if you please, I 'm Higgles," it is an English girl who 
speaks. Aside from a few little details of this kind, 
Harte's sketclies and poems are truly and admirably col- 
ored. He deserves his success, for he has separated him- 
self by a broad gulf from all the literary buffoonery of this 
day, which is sometimes grotesque and always inane. 
But he is picturesque^ and tlie coarsest humor of iiis char- 
acters rests on a pure human pathos. 

Galahad. Somehow, the use of a vulgar dialect in 
poetry is always unpleasant to me ; it is like a grinning 
mask over a beautiful face. And yet, how charming is 
*' 'Zekel's Courtship " ! 

The Ancient. Lowell has done all that is possible 
with the New England dialect. He has now and then 
steeped it in an odor of poetry which it never before 
exhaled and perhaps never may again. Compare it, for 
instance, with the Scotch of Burns, where every elision 
makes the word sweeter on the tongue, and where the 
words which are its special property are nearly always 
musical. The New England changes are generally on the 
side of roughness and clumsiness. With becomes an ugly 
'M, instead of the soft Scotch wV ; have hardens into A<?p, 
instead of flowing into hae ; and got coarsens into gut^ 
instead of the cpiaint sharpness of y^^. It is the very op- 
posite of the mellow broadness of the Scotch; it sacrifices 



DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 157 

the vowels and aggravates the consonants; its raciest 
qualities hint of prevarication and noncomrnital, and its 
sentiment is grotesque even when it is frank and touch- 
ing. Yet Lowell's genius sometimes so completely trans- 
figures this harsh material, that one's ear forgets it and 
hears only the finer music of his thought, 

ZoiLUS. Shall we read ? I suggest that we take tlie 
authors, to-night, in the order of their appearance. Walt 
Whitman leads. 

The Ancient. {Reads.) 

CAMERADOS. 

Everywhere, everywhere, following me ; 

Taking me by the buttonhole, pulling off my boots, hustling me 
with the elbows ; 

Sitting down with me to clams and the chowder -kettle ; 

Plunging naked at my side into the sleek, irascible surges ; 

Soothing me with the strain that I neither permit nor prohibit ; 

Flocking this way and that, reverent, eager, orotund, irrepres- 
sible ; 

Denser than sycamore leaves when the north-winds are scour- 
ing Paumanok ; 

What can I do to restrain them ? Nothing, verily nothing. 

Everywhere, everywhere, crying aloud for me ; 

Crying, I hear ; and I satisfy them out of my nature ; 

And he that comes at the end of the feast shall find something 
over. 

Whatever they w\ant I give ; though it be something else, they 
shall have it. 

Drunkard, leper, Tammanyite, small-pox and cholera patient, 
shoddy, and codfish millionnaire, 



158 DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

And the beautiful young men, and tlie beautiful young women, 

all the same, 
Crowding, hundreds of thousands, cosmical multitudes. 
Buss me and hang on my hips and lean up to my shoulders, 
Everywhere listening to my yawp and glad whenever they 

hear it ; 
Everywhere saying, say it, "Walt, we believe it : 
Everywhere, everywhere. 

ZoiLTJS. By Jove, Ancient ! you could soon develop 
into a Kosmos. 

The Ancient. It would uot be difficult, so far as the 
form is concerned. The immortal Tupper, iu his rivalry 
with Solomon, substituted semi-rhythmical prose lines 
for verse ; but Walt, being thoroughly iu earnest, often 
makes bis lines wholly rhythmical. I confess I enjoy his 
decameters and hecatameters. 

The Chorus. Bret Harte was the next appearance, 
after a very long interval. You will have to do your 
best, Galahad. 

Galahad. A superficial imitation is easy enough, but 
I shall certainly fail to reproduce his subtile wit aud 
pathos. {Reads.) 

TRUTHFUL JAMES'S SONG OF THE SHIRT. 

"Which his name it was Sam ; 

He had sluiced for a while 
Up at Murderer's Dam, 

Till he got a good pile, 
Aud the heft of each dollar. 

Two thousand or more. 



DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 159 

He' d put in the Chollar, 
For lie seed it was ore 
That rims thick up and down^ without ceilin' or floor. 

And, says he, it 's a game 

That 's got but one stake ; 
If I put up that same. 

It '11 bust me or make. 
At fifty the foot 

I 've entered my pile. 
And the whole derned cahoot 

I 'II let soak for a while, 
And jest loaf around here, — say, Jim, will you smile ? 

Tom Fakes was the chum, 

Down in Frisco, of Sam ; 
And one mornin' there come 

This here telegram : 
" You can sell for five hundred. 

Come down by the train ! " 
Sam By-Joed and By-Thundered, — 

'T was whistlin' quite plain. 
And down to Dutch Flat rushed with might and with main. 

He had no time to sarch, 

But he grabbed up a shirt 
That showed bilin' and starch, 

And a coat with less dirt. 
He jumped on the step 

As the train shoved away, 
And likewise was swep', 
All galliant and gay, 
^Round the edge of the mounting and down to'rds the Bay. 

Seven minutes, to pass 
Through the hole by the Flat ! 



IGO DIVERSIONS- OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

Says he, I 'm an ass 

If I can't shift in that ! 
But the train behind time. 

Only three was enough, — 
It came pat as a rhyme — 

He was stripped to the huff 
When they jumped from the tunnel to daylight ! 'T was rough. 

What else ? Here 's to you ! 

Which he sold of his feet 
At five hundred, 't is true. 

And the same I repeat : 
But acquaintances, friends, 

They likes to divert. 
And the tale never ends 

Of Sam and his shirt. 
And to stop it from goin' he 'd give all his dirt! 

ZoiLUS. You were right to take a merely comical inci- 
deut. You could n't possibly have echoed llie strong 
feeling which underlies the surface slang of such a poem 
as " Jim," which I consider Harle's masterpiece in his 
special veia. 

Galahad. He never could have written that if he 
had been only a humorist. His hiter work shows that 
he is a genuine poet. 

The Ancient. Yes, that special vein is like many in 
the Nevada mines, rich on the surface, narrowing as it 
goes down, pinched off by the primitive strata, opening 
again unexiiectcdly into a pocket, but never to be fully 
depended upon, liarte's instincts are too true not to see 
this : I believe he will do still better, and therefore prob- 
ably less popular work. 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 161 

The Gannet. Now, Zoilus, give us Hay, and let me 
close with a war-whoop ! 

Zoilus. I 'm not quite sure of my Pike dialect, but I 
fancy the tone is rough enough to satisfy you. [Reads.) 



BIG BILL. 

There 's them that eats till they 're hustiii' 

And them that drinks till they 're blind. 
And them that 's snufflin' and spooney. 

But the best of all, to my mind, 
(And I 've been around in my time, hoys. 

And cavorted with any you like,) 
Was Big Bill, that lived in the slashes. 

We called him Big Bill o' Pike. 

If he put his hand to his howie 

Or scratched the scruff of his neck. 
You could only tell by waitin' 

To see if you bled a peck : 
And the way he fired, 't was lovely ! 

Nobody knowed which was dead. 
Till Big Bill grinned, and the stiff 'un 

Tumbled over onto his head ! 

At school he killed his master ; 

Courtin', he killed seven more : 
And the hearse was always a-waitin' 

A little ways from his door. 
There was n't much growth in the county, 

As the census returns will show, 
But we had Big Bill we was proud of. 

And that was enough to grow. 

K 



162 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

And TioAv Big Bill is an angel, — 

Damn nie, it makes me cry ! 
Jist ■when he was rampin' the roughest, 

The poor fellow had to die. 
A thievin' and sneakin' Yankee 

Got the start on our hlessed Bill, 
And there 's no one to do our killin' 

And nobody left to kill ! 

ZoiLUS. Hay's realism, in those ballads, is of the 
grimmest kind. It is like the old Dance of Death, in 
a new form. I have been greatly amused by the actual 
fury which his " Little Breeches " and " Jim JBludso " 
have aroused in some sectarian quarters. To read the 
attacks, one would suppose that Christianity was threat- 
ened by the declaration that angels may interpose to save 
children, or that a man, ignorant or regardless of ordi- 
nary morality, may redeem his soul by the noblest sacri- 
fice. Really, it seems to me, that to diminish the range 
of individual damnation renders many good people un- 
happy. 

The Ancient. Hay has made his name known in 
the most legitimate way, — by representing phenomena 
of common Western life which he has observed. He 
might have faintly echoed Shelley or Tennyson for a 
decade, and accomplished notliiug. Tliose ballads are 
not, strictly speaking, poetry ; but it is impossible that 
tliey should not give him a tendency to base his better 
])ocuis on the realities of our American life. 

The Chorus. Let us hear tlic Gannet's war-whooji ! 

The G annex. There is nothiug easier than to exag- 
gerate exaggeration. {Reads.) 



DIVEESIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 163 



THE FATE OE THE FRONTIERSMAN. 

That whiskey -jug ! For, dry or wet, 
My tale will need its help, you bet ! 

We made for the desert, she and I, 

Though life was loathsome, and love a lie, 

And she gazed on me with her glorious eye. 

But all the same, — I let her die ! 

For why ? — there was barely water for one 

In the small canteen, and of provender, none ! 

A splendid snake, with an emerald scale. 

Slid before us along the trail, 

"With a famished parrot pecking its head ; 

And, seizing a huge and dark brown rock 

In her dark brown haiids, as you crush a crock. 

With the dark brown rock she crushed it dead. 

But ere her teeth in its flesh could meet, 

I laid her as dead as the snake at my feet, 

And grabbed the snake for myself to eat. 

The plain stretched wide, from side to side, 

As bare and blistered and cracked and dried 

As a moccasin sole of buffalo hide, 

And my throat grew hot, as I walked the trail. 

My blood in a sizzle, my muscles dry, 

A crimson glare in my glorious eye. 

And I felt my sinews wither and fail. 

Like one who has lavished, for fifty nights. 

His pile in a hell of gambling delights, 

And is kicked at dawn from bottle and bed. 

And sent to the gidches without a red. 



164 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

There was no penguin to pick or pluck. 

No armadillo's throat to be stuck. 

Not even a bilberry's ball of blue 

To slush my tongue with its indigo dew. 

And the dry brown palm-trees rattled and roared 

Like the swish and swizzle of Walker's sword. 

I was nigh nibbed out ; when, far away, 

A shanty baked in the furnace of day, 

And I petered ou, for an hour or more, 

Till I dro])ped, like a mangy hound, at the door. 

No soul to be seen ; but a basin stood 

On the bench, with a mess of dubious food. 

Stringy and doughy and lumpy and thick. 

As the clay ere llame has turned it to brick. 

I gobbled it up with a furious fire, 

A prairie squall of hungry desire, 

And strength came back ; when, lo ! a scream 

Closed my stomach and burst my dream. 

She stood before me, as lithe and tall 

As a musqueet-bush on the Pimos wall, 

Fierce as the Zuni panther's leap. 

Fair as the slim Apache sheep. 

A lariat draped her broad brown hips, 

As she stood and glared with parted lips, 

"While piercing stitches and maddening shoots 

Ran through my body, from brain to boots. 

1 would have clasped her, but, ere I could. 

She Hung back her hair's tempestuous hood. 

And screamed, in a voice like a tiger-cat's : 

" You 've gone and ett up my pizcn for rats ! " . 

My blood grew limp and my hair grew hard 

As the steely tail of the desert pard : 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 165 

I sank at her feet, convulsed and pale. 
And kissed in anguish her brown toe-nail. 
You may rip the cloud from the frescoed sky, 
Or tear the man from his place in the moon, 
Fur from the buzzard and plumes from the coon, 
But you can't tear me from the truth I cry, 
That life is loathsome and love a lie. 
She lifted me up to her bare brown face, 
She cracked my ribs in her brown embrace, 
And there in the shanty, side by side. 
Each on the other's bosom died. 

She 's now the mistress of Buffalo Bill, 

And pure as the heart of a lily still ; 

"While I 'vc killed all who have cared for me, 

And I 'm just as lonely as I can be. 

So, pass the whiskey, — we '11 have a spree ! 

Omnes. The real thing ! 

ZoiLUS. You've beaten us all, but no -wonder! 
Mucli of Joaquin Miller's verse is itself a travesty of 
poetry. Ancient, you talk about high ideals of literary 
art, and all that sort of thiug: can you tell me what 
Rossetti and the rest of the English critics mean, in 
hailing this man as the great American poet? 

The Ancient. One thing, of course, they cannot 
see, — the thorough spuriousness of his characters, with 
tiieir costumes, scenery, and all other accessories. Why, 
he takes Lara and the Giaour, puts tliem in a fantastic, 
impossible country called " Arizona " or " California," and 
describes them with a rhythm borrowed from Swinburne 
and a frenzy all his own, — and we are called upon to 



166 DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 

accept tins as something original and grand ! The amazed 
admiration of a class in England, and the gushing grati- 
tude of one in America, form, together, a spectacle over 
■which the pure, serene gods must bend in convulsions of 
inextinguishable laughter. 

ZoiLUS. Give me your hand ! As Thackeray* said, let 
us swear eternal friendship ! You have often provoked 
me by persistently mollifying my judgments of authors; 
but, if you had done so iu this casCj I could not have 
forgiven you. Joaquin Miller, and he alone, would prove 
the decadence of our literature : he is an Indianized copy 
of Byron, made up of shrieks and war-paint, and the life 
he describes is too brutal, selfish, and insane ever to have 
existed anywhere, A few fine lines or couplets, or an 
occasional glittering bit of descri])tion, are not enough to 
make him a genius, or even an unusual talent. 

The Gannet. But the matei-ial — not his, the true, 
Arizonian material — is good, and he has shown shrewd- 
ness in selecting it. He is clever, in some ways, or he 
never could have made so much capital in England. His 
temporary success here is only an echo of his success tliere. 

ZoiLUS. If he were a young fellow of twenty, I 
should say, wait; but his is not the exaggeration of 
youth, it is the affectation of manhood. 

Galahad. If anybody ever seriously said, "Alas!" 
I sliould say it now. I have picked up many a grain of 
good counsel in the midst of our fun, and the fun itself 
lias become an agreeable stimulus which I shall miss. 
\Vc must not give up our habit wholly. 

ZoiLUS. There is no end of intellectual and poetic 
gyiunastics, which we may try. I propose that we close 



DIVERSIONS OF THE ECHO CLUB. 167 

with a grand satirical American " Walpurgis-Niglit," 
modelled on Goethe's Intermezzo in Faust. $ 

TuE Gannet. That is a good idea, but how shall we 
carry it out ? 

ZoiLUS. Let each write a stanza or two, satirizing 
some literary school, author, magazine, or newspaper, 
throw it into the hat, and then take another, as long as 
we can keep up the game. When all are exhausted, give 
the hat to the Ancient and let him read the whole collec- 
tion of squibs, in tlie order in which they turn up, 

Omnes {eagerltj). Accepted! 

[Here, I am compelled to state, my liberty as a reporter 
ceases. The plan was carried out, and 1 think it was not 
entirely unsuccessful. But our mirth was partly at the 
expense of others : many of the stanzas were only lively 
and good-humored, but many others thrust out a sharp 
sting in the last line. As I was not an accomplice, I was 
perfectly willing that they should all be given to the 
public. Zoilus did not seriously object; but the other 
lliree were peremptory in their prohibition. Even the 
Gannet ccyifesscd that he was not courageous enough to 
run tlie risk of making half a dozen permanent enemies 
by shafts of four lines apiece : he knew how largely the 
element of personal profit and reputation enters into 
American literary life, and how touchy a sensitiveness it 
develops. There was no denying this, for they related 
many instances to prove it. I yielded, of course, although 
it was a disappointment to me. After having tlms en- 
tered authorship by a side-door, as it were, I find the 
field very pleasant ; and I withdraw now, since there is 
no alternative, with reluctance. — The Nameless Re- 
porter.] 



THE BATTLE OF THE BAEDS. 



[At the opening of the Fair of the American Institute, in 
New York, on the 7th of September, 1871, an original poem 
of some length was recited by Walt AVhitman. At that time 
Bret Harte's and Colonel John Hay's admirable dialect ballads 
wei-e read by everybody, and the sudden popularity which 
Joaquin Miller had obtained in England, a few months pre- 
vious, made him the subject of much newspaper remark. The 
fact that these four authors, notwithstaudiug the very difFereut 
quality of their work, were then specially prominent in public 
interest, suggested travesties which should reprcscut tlicm as 
rivals, each claimiug ascendency over the others. The greater 
part of Walt Whitnuiu's [)roductiou was published in the " New 
York Tribune " on the 8th of September, in the report of the 
opening of the Fair; and on the same day, the four following 
imitations, without the connecting prose passages, were seut to 
that paper. The latter were added by the editor thei^iu charge, 
and probably coutributed even more to the amusement of the 
public than tlie poems themselves. The rare liberality — nay, in 
a literary seusc, generosity — which the editor exhibited would be 
uuiversally appreciated, if it were proper to mention his name] 

E have never regretted so much as yesterday 
the limited capacity of our eight pages wliicli 
compelled us to omit sonic portions of Mr. 
Whitman's remarkable poem. It was perhaps 
ilie most remarkable wiiicli lias ever been delivered before 
ail Industrial Assembly, and we arc assured by the offi- 




THE BATTLE OE THE BARDS. 169 

cers of tlie Signal Service that it is not probable that an- 
other such disturbance of the elements will take place this 
century. It is this consideration which induces us to 
print the following choice extract which was yesterday 
ransomed, at great expense, from the hands of the Celtic 
lady who sweeps out the office. The Niglit Editor has 
been severely censured for slaughtering this exquisite 
morceau, and compared to the base Judean who threw a 
pearl away richer than all his agate. 



WALT WHITMAN. 

Who was it sang of the procreant urge, recounted sextillions of 

subjects ? 
Who but myself, the Kosmos, yawping abroad, concerned not 

at all about either the effect or the answer ; 
Straddling the Continent, gathering into my hairy bosom the 

growths, whatever they were, and nothing slighted, 

nothing forgotten ? 
Allezl I am the One, the only One, and this is my Chant 

Democratique. 
Where is he that heard not, and she that heard not, and they 

that heard not, before and during and after ? 
All is wholesome and clean, and all is the effluent strain, impec- 
cable, sweet, of the clasper of comrades. 
If there were anything else, I woidd sing it ; 
But there is nothing, no jot or tittle, or least little scraping of 

subject or matter : 
No, there is nothing at all, and all of you know it. 

[We make room for further portions of our report of the 
opening of the Institute, which were crowded out yesterday.] 
8 



170 THE BATTLE OF THE BARDS. 

T\lien Mr. Whitman's voice liad died away among the 
patent pumps and corn-cutters whicli cumbered tlic vast 
amphitheatre, a slight but elegantly formed gentleman 
lounged forward from among the refrigerators, and said 
in a voice of singular sweetness, — 

"Air this a free fight?" 

His face was tlie face of Raphael and his boots were 
tlie boots of Cinderella. Ilis black curls fell damply over 
a liigb, pale brow, but vrere not materially injured by the 
fall. An enormous diamond, the dying gift of Pinky the 
Bilk, whom lie had tenderly shot in church one day at 
Sandy Bar for being a half-second out of time on the 
Aniens, glittered on his lady-like finger. By one of those 
cynical contrasts of the frontier, his garb was by Poole, 
but his mustache was dyed by Day and Martin. 

"I've lieerd," he continued, putting his hand behind 
his hip, " that this was a trial trip of song-sharps. Ef so, 
I '11 jest chip in. I 'm from Roaring Camp, near Skunk's 
Misery, and my name is — well, you know that, if you 
know anytliing." He read with exquisite expression the 
following : — 

"Who? Well — coinin' so sudJcnt, 

I 'm hardly ready to say. 
I know: but I 'd rather you would n't 

Put it to me just that way. 
Not that my stripe is modest ; 

That was rubbed off long ago : 
And I have been questioned the oddest 

And I 'm not altogether slow. 

Come, — set up to this here tabic ! 
You ! — bring us two more beci-s ! 



THE BATTLE OF THE BAEDS. 171 

Could n't I put it as a fable, 

Sich as a boy often hears ? 
You know every gard'ner mulcbes 

Round some partic'lar tree : 
Men read, in the deepest gulches, 

And so — they 've found out me ! 

'T was cuttin' a queer sort o' capers. 

So the folks out there said ; 
But I ask you to look in the papers. 

And see what stuff 's most read. 
Why, Jim, the very way I met you 

People knows, far and near, — 
Knows from my tellin', — and yet you 

Ask me who 's first ! It 's queer. 

Hang it ! what 's the use o' beatin' 

Round the bush in this here way ? 
And you doiu' all the treatin', 

And me with nothing to say ! 
Here 's to us ! — this way I can show it. 

If you have n't already guessed : 
We 're drinkin' the health o' the poet 

That 's flattened out all the rest ! 

Here a long, lank, farmer-looking man, with travel- 
stained garments of Kentucky jeans, a weather-beaten 
face, rough with two days of grizzled beard, enormous 
brown hands and wrists protruding from the short coat- 
sleeves, and a general air of melancholy and tobacco 
about him, came slouching up to the platform, and taknig 
off his tattered fur cap, said to the President, — 

" Good morning, Jedge 1 I drapped in to take a hand 



172 THE BATTLE OF THE BARDS. 

'long o' the other poets, but ef ye ain't got no better stock 
nor this, I reckon I '11 skeet back to Spunky Pint. Wliy, 
Jedge ! my little Gabe — he's at school at Hell's Bend 
in Magoopin Co. — dogg on my skin ef he can't sing tlie 
socks otf'n that thar httle Ganibolier." 

" Confine yourself to your own poetry," said the chair^ 
man, austerely ; and the Pike sadly shook the hay-seed 
from his long iron-gray hair, and read these rhymes, in a 
snuffling tone curiously at variance with their libertine 
tendency : — 

You fello\Ys East may sing as you please, 

And tickle the scalps of all concerned ; 
You may cant away with Canthaiides, 

Rip with Euripides, and be derned ! 
But to find the real high-pressure style, 

And travel the stavingcst road to glory. 
You must go out AVest for a thousand mile. 

And never stop till you pass Peory. 

We don't prance round iu white kid gloves, 

Smelliu' of grease and sassyfrack : 
Our vittles ain't honey and turlle-doves, 

And when we kiss, it 's a reg'lar smack. 
We take things rough, but wc swaller 'em whole ; 

"We don't pretend to be simperin' pious ; 
And what we are tit for, blast my soul ! 

If you want to know, come out and try us ! 

These here United States, they say, 

Is owiu' the world an outfit of verse : ~^,^ 

Pike County '11 iix it, any day. 

And who goes furder "11 fare the worse. 



THE BATTLE OP THE BARDS. 173 

There 's a man lives out on tte peraira thar, 
In an old shebang, as I 've heard tootin'. 

And if hisn don't go through your hide and har, 
It 's my opinion there '11 be some shootin'. 

A wild war-whoop resounded through the building, 
and a wilder apparition burst upon the scene. He was 
dressed from head to foot in buckskin dyed a fiery red ; 
strings of silver bells tinkled about him ; his face was 
painted in broad alternate bands of green, yellow, and 
crimson ; a long scalp-lock, stiffened with eagle- s feathers, 
reached half-way to the ceiling. [Mr, Shanks ordered 
this report to be strong. I hope this will suit. — Re- 
PORTEE,.] In a voice loud enough to drown the whistle of 
ten locomotives, he read in a strange runic chant the fol- 
lowing poem, from a manuscript signed Joaquin, written 
in letters of blood on the tanned hide of a Camanche 
princess : — 

l^ar on the hot Apache plain 

I sinched the girth and I buckled the rein : 

The glorious girl behind me sang, 

But I sprang to the saddle without a pang. 

And gave the spur to my wild mustang, 

And a coil of the loose riata's fold 

Over his flanks like a serpent rolled. 

As his hoofs went forward, and forward, and on. 

Till the plain, and the hills, and the girl, were goue. 

The forests of cactus stabbed and stung, 

The sun beat down on my skinless tongue, 

The dust was thick in my simmering mouth. 

And a whirlwind of flame came out of the South, 

From the dry bananas, whose fiery hair 



174 THE BATTLE OF THE BARDS. 

Singed the monkeys and parroquets there. 

I crashed through the fianie, I dashed o'er the sand. 

Bearing my songs in my red right hand. 

Bearing the songs of the "Western land, 

Tender and glowing and fierce and grand. 

Take them and read them and yield me the crown 

Which the old Sierras on me cast down 

From peaks untrodden, of gorgeous glare. 

Cast down upon me and bade me wear ! 

And whoso denies it he shall he 

Struck, and despised, and spit on, by me, 

Asa loathsome snake, as a venomous thing, 

Y\t but to swelter and crawl and sting. 

And build his cell in the rotten, rank 

Recess of a noisome toadstool bank. 

While I, like a hawk in the splendid sky, 

Scream revenge as I wheel on high, 

And the sound of my screaming shall never die ! 

Obituary. — Ananias Longbow, of our City Depart- 
ment, yesterday fell or was thrown from the tliird-story 
windows of The Tribune building. No cause is as- 
signed for the rash act. 




^ 



-" 'm^ 



A EEYIEW 



[Published in the " New York Tribune," December 4, 1875.] 



THE INN ALBUM. 

Osgood & Co. 



By Robert Browning. James R. 




HAT 's tills? A book? 16mo. — Osgood's 
page, 
Pair, clear, Olympian-typed, and save a scant 
0' the margin, stiff i' the hurried binding, 
good ! 
Intituled how ? " The Inn Album, Robert Brown- 
ing, Author y Why should lie not say, as well. 
The Hotel Register ? — cis-Atlantic term ! 
Nay, an he should, the action might purvey 
To lower compreliensions : so not he ! 
Reflect, 't is Browning! — he neglects, prepense. 
All forms of form : what he gives must we take. 
Sweet, bitter, sour, absinthean, adipose. 
Conglomerate, jellied, potted, salt, or dried. 
As the mood holds him ; ours is not to choose ! 
Well (here huge sighs be heard !) commending us 
To Heaven's high mercy, let us read ! 



176 A HE VIEW. 

— Three liours : 
The end is readied ; but who begins review, 
Torgetful o' beginning, with the end ? 
Turn back ! — why, here 's a hue supplies us witli 
Curt comment on the whole, though travesty, — 
Hail, calm obliquity/, lugubrious ]plot ! — 
Yea, since obliquity the straight path is, 
And Passion worships as her patron saint 
Tiie Holy Vitus, and from Language fall 
The rusty chains of rhythm and harmony, 
Why not exclaim, ''Hail, sham obliquitij ! '^ 
Too hard, you murmur, sweet submissive minds ?- 
But take a bite o' the original pie ! Set teeth, 
'Ware cherry-stones, and if a herring-spine 
Stick crosswise i' the throat, go gulp, shed tdars. 
But blame not us ! So runs the opening : — 

" That oblong book 's the Album ; hand it here ! 
Exactly ! page on page of gratitude 
For breakfast, dinner, supper, and the view ! 
I praise these poets : they leave margin-space ; 
Each stanza seems to gather skirts around, 
And primly, trimly, keep the foot's confine, 
Modest and maidhkc ; lubber prose o'ersprawls 
And straddling stops the path from left to right. 
Since I want space to do my ciplier-work, 
"Which poem spares a corner? "What comes first ?* 
' Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot ! ' 
(Open the window, we burn daylight, boy !) 
Or see — succinctcr beauty, brief and bold — 
' If a fellow can dine On ruiup steaks and port wine 
lie needs not desjmir Of dininy well here — ' 



A EEVIEW. 177 

* Here ! ' I myself could find a better rhyme. 
That bard 's a Browning ; he neglects the form ! 
But ah, the sense, ye gods, the weighty sense ! " 

T/iis bard 's a Browning ! — there 's no doubt of that : 

But, ah, ye gods, t/ie sense ! Are we so sure 

If sense be sense unto our common-sense. 

Low sense to higher, high to low, no sense 

All sense to those, all sense no sense to these ? 

That 's wliere your poet tells ! — and you 've no right 

(Insensate sense with sensuous thought being mixed) 

To ask analysis ! How can else review, 

Save in the dialect of his verse, be writ ? 

So write we : (would we might foresee the end ! ) 

So has he taught us, i' " The Ring and The Book," 

I)e gustibus, concerning taste, 7ion est 

There 's no — disputing, dlspiitandum (Ha ! 

'T is not so difficult) — and we submit. 

Iling prompter's bell ! — let to strange music rise . 
The curtain : here 's a country inn's best room ; 
The persons, two, have gambled all night through. 
And now 't is morning. One 's "a polished snob," 
Young, rich, yet with rough base of manliness 
(We learn this afterward) ; the elder man, 
A lord, the meanest scoundrel ever lived 
(So we shall find), "refinement every inch 
Erom brow to boot-end." Ciphers he in book, — 
No paper else ! — and, stead of snob's loss, finds 
Himself fhe loser by ten tliousand pounds ! 
Much dialogue ensues, — the substance this: 
Snob offers to forgive the debt, keep mum ; 

8* L 



178 A REVIEW. 

With insult lord refuses, penniless 

And overbearing; "■father s apron still 

Sticks out from son's court-vesture; still silk purse 

Roughs finger with some bristle sow-ear born ! " 

So speaketK he, " refinement every inch," 

Et cetera. Well, they pay the tavern bill, 

Walk toward the station, lord intent to catch 

The morning train to town, while snob remains 

To seek a neighbor cousin, possible wife. 

To ordinary persons liere were end. 

Not so to Browning-persons ; wait a bit, 

And you '11 perceive the red-clawed Tragic's hawk 

Pounce on the thoughtless chick of Commonplace, 

I' midst o' dunghill-blessedness ! 

As the two 
Sighted tlie station, train unwhistled yet, 
A gate invites : what fool such swinging seat. 
Albeit -sliarp edge to gluteal want o' pad, 
Disdaineth ? Thereupon tliey perch, and then 
!Muc1» dialogue ensues, — the upshot this : 
Lord met, four years ago, admired, betrayed 
A parson's daugliter, tamely wedded now 
And lost to him, — his chance of life no less 
A loss : the apple ripe to hand wilhheld 
Dr()])s and the swine dewur: he sees it now. 
Snob met, four years ago, admired and loved, 
And then renounced, the stateliest of her sex, 
A lord befooled, then married, — so the tale : 
l\)»ir years — a parson's daughter. — was 't the same ? 
Unmarried I, says lord ; 't is not the same. 



A REVIEW. 179 

I 

(But 't was the same of course : tlie reader sees 
Cat's-whiskers where tjie meal is seeming smooth. 
And tadpole-tails i' the mud ;) so talking, train 
Whisks past, no second till the afternoon. 
And lord goes back to tavern, snob strides off 
To visit aunt and cousin. 

Second scene : 
(Hail, calm obliquity, lugubrious plot ! ) 
Enter the cousin in, the inn's best room. 
With female friend, arrived by train ! This friend — 
" Superb one," Browning says, and we know whom ! — 
Summoned by cousin on the snob to hold. 
Privately, judgment; should she wed or not ? 
Much dialogue ensues, — no substance now, 
Mere beating round the bush, but one grows pale. 
The other wonders, — reader, haply, thinks 
The Devil 's to pay when all together meet ! 

Superb one left alone, comes back my lord, 

"^ Seeing not first the lady watching elm 
At window, takes the "Inn Album," opens page. 
And (Heaven knows wliy !) reads once again : 
■^' Hail, calm acclioitij, salubrious spot ! " 

r- Thereat, explosions : with " black-blooded brow " 
Tlie lady fronts him, — hate, defiance, rage. 
Burn, spit, hiss, boil, and bubble in her speech. 
Tlien he, in tiirn, " refinement every inch 
From brow to boot-end," answers thus : — 

"So, I it was allured you — only I — 
I, and ndnc other — to this spectacle — 



180 A REVIEW. 

Your triumph, my despair — you woman fiend 

That front me ! Well, I have my wish, then ! See 

The low wide brow oppressed by sweeps of hair 

Darker and darker as they coil and swathe 

The crowned corpse-wanness whence the eyes burn black. 

Not asleep now ! not pin-points dwarfed beneath 

Either great bridging eyebrow — poor blank beads — 

Babies, I 've pleased to pity in my time : 

How they protrude and glow immense with bate ! 

The long triumphant nose attains — retains 

Just the perfection ; and there 's scarlet-skein 

]\Iy ancient enemy, her lip and lip. 

Sense-free, sense-frighting lips clenched cold and bold 

Because of chin, that based resolved beneath ! 

Then the columnar neck completes the whole 

Greek-sculpture-baffling body ! Do I see ? 

Can I observe ? You wait next word to come ? 

Well, wait and want ! since no one blight I bid 

Consume one least perfection. Each and all. 

As they are rightly shocking now to me. 

So may they still continue ! Value them ? 

Ay, as the vender knows the money-worth 

Of his Greek statue, fools aspire to buy. 

And he to see the back of! Let us laugh ! 

You have absolved me from my sin at least ! 

You stand stout, strong, in the rude health of hate, 

No toiu-h of the tame timid nullity 

My cowardice, forsooth, has practised on ! 

Ay, while you seemed to hint some line lifth act 

Of tragedy should freeze blood, cud the farce, 

I never doubted all was joke. I kept, 

;May be, an eye alert on jjaragraplis. 

Newspaper notice — let no inquest slip. 



A REVIEW. 181 

Accident, disappearance : sound and safe 
"Were you, my victim, not of mind to die ! " 

Answer to this brutality (when we 

Think who and what the two, abominable !) 

Youclisafes slie, — story of lier wedded life. 

Husband a country curate, stupidly 

Yet most devoutly saving stupid souls, 

Whose interests she, this goddess in the flesh. 

Endures in ennui killing heart and brain. 

Life grown a hell, save for defiant pride 

To answer him, — yea, wild, illogical. 

She moves us somewhat. Hearken now to him. 

Who thus speaks, after insult : — 

" God forgives ; 
Forgive you, delegate of God, brought near 
As never priest could bring him to this soul 
That prays you both — forgive me ! I abase — 
Know myself mad and monstrous utterly 
In all I did that moment ; but as God 
Gives me this knowledge — heart to feel and tongue 
To testify — so be you gracious too ! 
Judge no man by the solitary work 
Of — well, they do say and I can believe — 
The devil in him : his, the moment, — mine 
The life — your life ! 

He names her name again. 
You were just — merciful as just, you were 
In giving me no respite : punishment 
Followed oifending. Sane and sound once more. 
The patient thanks decision, promptitude, 
Which flung him prone and fastened him from hurt 



182 A EEYIEW. 

Haply to others, surely to liiraself. 

I wake aud would not you had spared one pang. 

All 's well that ends well ! " 

And so ou, for the space of iiiuety lines. 

The brute and blackguard mouths his lyric love. 

Falls on his knees, abases to the dust 

His liaughtv selfishness. To which relapse 

Tliis much (much else omitted) is the pith 

Of her reply : — 

" You are the Adversary ! 

Your fate is of your choosiug: have your choice! 

Wander the world, — God has some end to serve. 

Ere he suppress you ! He waits : I endure, 

But interpose no finger-tip, forsooth. 

To stop your ])assage to the pit. Enough 

That I am stahle, uninvolved by you 

In the rush downward : free I gaze and fixed ; 

Your smiles, your tears, prayers, curses move alike 

My crowned contempt. You kneel ? Prostrate yourself 

To earth, and would the whole world saw you there ! " 

A step : a voice " All right ! " outside ; the snob 

Comes back a-sudden, pushes wide the door. 

Sees knccler, kneeled-to, deeply breathes an " Ah-h ! " 

— True melodrama ! Take this inir-r-rse of gold. 

Me hated rival : in another l-l-land 

T will make thee r-r-rich ! You 're wrong, my eager 

f-f-friend, 
Dead out o' reckoning ! What says the snob, 
Wliom scattered evidence of nianlincss 
Made sccni a nuiu ? No explanation souglit. 



A REVIEW. 183 

He belches bile and gall, stirs gutter-filth. 

Names " bag and baggage," " friend-and-goddess love," 

Insults, bespatters, rages. She, between. 

Soothes him, defies the other ; then this last. 

His knees still dusty from the abject prayer. 

Again is devil. (Hark ye, here 's the dodge 

To cook original passion : what men do 

Don't let them do, and what they never do 

Do : none can guess what next shall hap i' the tale ; 

Passion is incoherent, and you 've still 

Nature to fall upon.) This Album-book — 

Hail, sham obliquity, lugubrious plot ! 

Is wellnigh read ; you end the tangle, smash ! 

Here 's Browning's recipe ; take heaps o' hate. 

Take boundless love, hydraulic-pressed, in bales, 

Distilments keen of baseness and of pride. 

And innocence and cunning, — mix 'em well. 

And put a body round 'em ! Add the more 

O' this, or that, you have another, — stay ! 

The sex don't count ; make female of the male, 

Male female, all the better ; let them meet. 

Talk, love, hate, cross, till satisfied — then, kill ! 

So here : lord, finding situation tough 

(Between two fires, hate and a horsewhip-threat). 

Writes i' the Album, goes without and waits. 

Superb One, having read, takes hand of snob. 

Accepts his love till death ; then lord comes back. 

What did he write ? " Refinement every inch 

Erom brow to boot-end," 't was a threat to tell 

The country curate of his wife's disgrace, — 

He, the disgracer ! Snob gets wild at that. 

Screams, jumps, and clutches 



184 A EEVIEW. 

All at once we sec 
One character dead — but how, we don't quite know. 
Then she, Superb One, whites in Album, dies 
By force of will, (no hint of instrument !) 
Leaving the snob alone and much surprised. 
Cousin is heard without ; but ere the door 
Opens, the story closes. Only this remains. 
The last conundrum, hardly guessable 
By tlie unbrownmged mind. Since what it means, 
If aught the meaning, means some other thing 
And that thing something else, but this not that. 
Nor that the other, — we adopt the lines 
As most expressing what we fail express. 
Our solemn verdict, handkerchief and all. 
Upon the book : we quote, with grateful heart : — 

" All 's ended and all 's overl Verdict found 
' Not guilty ' — prisoner forthwith set free. 
Mid cheers the Court pretends to disregard! 
Now Portia, now for Daniel, late severe, 
At last appeased, benignant ! ' This young man — 
llem — has the young man s foibles but no fault, 
lie 's virgin soil — a friend must cultivate. 
I think no ^ilant called " love " grows wild — a friend 
May introduce, and name the bloom, the fruit ! ' 
Here somebody dares wave a handkerchief — 
She '11 want to hide her face with presently ! 
Good by then ! ' Cignofedel, cigno fedel, 
Addio ! ' Now, was ever such mistake — 
Ever such ibobsli ugly omen ? Pshaw ! 
"NVagncr beside ! ' J mo tc solo, tc 
Solo amai !' That 's worth fifty such! 
But, nuini, the grave face at the open door ! " 



A REVIEW. 



185 



The meaning ask you, O ingenuous soul ? 
Why, were there such for you, what then were left 
To puzzle brain witli, pump conjecture dry. 
And prove you little where the poet 's great ? 
Great must he be, you therefore little : — go ! 
The curtain falls, the candles are snuffed out : 
E/id, damned obliquity^ lugubrious 'plot ! 




PAEADISE DISCOYEEED. 



AN EPIC, 




F Pork and Beans, wliicli from the primal East, 
Bejoud tlie Indian Monnt, ^liere early tricks 
Her purfled scarf old Titlion's paramour. 
And Arimaspean giants, famed of old. 
Ravaged the Scythian plains, the nations bore 
Westward to Celtic and the Saxon fields, 
And thence o'er dangers of the glistering seas 
To bloom, transplanted, on New England soil, 
I sing : and thou, who givest ample food 
To palates sated with Parisian feasts, 
Apician god, whether thy feet be stayed 
In markets vast, beside the minted lamb. 
Or from the fumes of savory coppers tak'st 
Dcliglit of boiling beef, commend my song, 
And raise it to tliat lieiglit of argument 
"Wliicli makes the theme, full humble though it be, 
Cirander than strains of old Maconides. 
Eor I upon tliat famous dish was nurst, 
Scoffed at crcwhilc, whose now acknowledged woi*tlr 
The round world echoes, — wlicncc increase of use, 



PARADISE DISCOVERED. 187 

And pseans louder than the orby clang 
Of shields at Radamont or Mandragore, 
Or where Biscayan bulwarks front the wave 
Trebonian, or of Syrtis by Cyrene 
Borasmian thunders : nor no lesser joy. 
Though silent, cheek distent with pungent weed, 
Peel Siasconset's fishers, homeward blown 
Erom broad Hyannis and the shoaling sands. 
When all the air, from every chimney-flue. 
Breathes odors of the Dish ; and each his own 
With practised nostril from the steamy twine 
Untangles. Hail ! thou bright, warm effluence ! 
Hail, wedded nourishment ! — 

{Cetera desunt, owing to the precipitate flight of the indignant 
Muse.) 




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